


The truth?

by Lionessinthedark



Series: The fate of Khan Noonien Singh [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: BDSM (but only in the mirror-universe), Confusion, Fair trial?, Freedom fight, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, M/M, Mirror Universe, New Vulcan, Other, Sex, Twisted relationships, Very bad incidenses in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-04-21 09:44:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 57,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4824209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionessinthedark/pseuds/Lionessinthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khan and his frozen crew are on their way in a star ship...but towards what and why?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now it is finished. But I still have some ideas floating in my head...so maybe a sequel later.<br/>English is not my native tongue....so I apologize for the failures. And of course I do not own the characters.....</p>
<p>And......Thank you for kudos! :-)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prolouge

**Author's Note:**

> This is in the universe of the alternate reality in “Star Trek into Darkness”. Khan’s back ground story is not altered like in my other stories. He was the leader of one third of the Earth and fled with the remains of his people after the Eugenic Wars in the star ship “SS Botany Bay”.  
> He was created in a lab though and not abducted as a child from the streets of New Delhi (as in Alan Dean Foster’s background story).
> 
> And I do not own the characters. I just borrow them.

It was about 2 years into the 5-years voyage of the SS-Enterprise. During the reparation of the star ship and during the first 2 years of the star ship’s voyage Khan had remained in his cryo-tube....together with his crew and in a facility that was under the surveillance of the Star-fleet Command. People had been engaged to monitor the tubes, but frankly they had no idea how they worked in detail and what to do if the more than 300 years old technology would start to fail.

Khan had been cryo-tubed after McCoy secretly had taken blood from him to save Kirk and that had been time enough for Khan to heal. The injuries in his body from the crash with the Vengeance and from the fight with Spock had been severe and extensive and Spock, who had allowed himself to feel a very small amount of pride for being able to overcome the augmented man in that fight, had to realise that the only reason, why he had been able to defeat the augment, was that the Khan indeed had been dangerously injured: broken ribs and severe internal bleedings and subdural haematomas (bleeding) in the brain too.

Spock had to meditate a lot to forgive himself that he had tried to kill Khan and that over something that Khan only had known about, but not had done himself. That the battle between the two star-ships, the SS Enterprise and the SS Vengeance, had caused the Enterprise’s warp core to finally and permanently get out of line, would not have happened if not Marcus had had someone to temper with that core previously. Khan had, as Spock much too late realised, had no opportunity to do such a thing and the fact that every protection-suit had been destroyed...thoroughly...should have told Spock that it had been done even before they had left Earth on their hunt for “the terrorist John Harrison”. Everything happening according to Marcus’ plans of starting a war against the Klingons.

And too late both Jim and Spock realised that Khan indeed had not planned to kill everybody on the SS Enterprise. The greatest damage had been done by Marcus and Khan had only attempted to cripple the ship and not to blow it to pieces. He had not aimed at the most vulnerable spots....and he had known to the millimetre where they were, as he had studied the building-plans of the USS Enterprise meticulously when he had constructed the “Vengeance”.

Given time to think and contemplate over what had happened, Spock realised a lot of things. And he had a lot of time to think as Jim was coming back to life and was healing and the Enterprise was being repaired; and the destructions in London and San Francisco, caused by Khan, were being partly mended too.  
The “Archive” in London had revealed a lot of secrets....even if a lot of things had been destroyed during the vast explosion. In the debris were secrets to be found, both physically, but on the net too. And those secrets were, to put it mildly, “dubious”.

The first found by McCoy, as he was searching for something about Khan’s physiology, when Khan’s body didn’t react well on the amount of sedation McCoy saw himself using to keep Khan sedated. There were two reasons for this sedation: first: it would be morally wrong to put a wounded and yet not healed man in the cryo-tube and freeze him. Even McCoy could figure out, without knowing how those cryo-tubes worked in detail, that a process that kept the body in a suspended condition almost preventing bodily processes to happen, including ageing, that very same process would prevent the body from healing too. Therefore they couldn’t freeze Khan’s body before it had healed. At least not if they wanted him to be frozen for a long time....and be able to wake him again. And second: it would be very unwise not to have Khan sedated as he had shown exactly what he was capable of when awake.

At first McCoy had sedated Khan by continuously pumping him full of the heaviest sedation to be found. Not amongst human medicine, but found in the world of veterinary medicine. The sedation that could put an angry 7500 kg heavy elephant-bull in “must” to sleep for several hours, could only keep Khan sedated by continuous administration every 15 minutes or so. And then by searching the internet and by using a very illegal obtained code that gave McCoy access to highly classified search-results, McCoy stumbled over something he first thought was ancient knowledge from the time just before the Eugenic Wars, but then showed to be results obtained, when Khan had been in the hands of admiral Marcus and his men. A formula that exactly showed how much and for how long a special sedation would be needed to sedate an augment of Khan’s height and weight. It later turned out that it was a special Andorran....alien....substance that could sedate Khan. His creators 300 years ago had not anticipated alien substances when they made him resistant to various poisons, drugs and diseases and therefore the information must have been obtained recently.

The sedation was very potent and as far as McCoy could see without any side-effects, except from the horror and nausea McCoy felt as he continued reading the test-results from that secret file.

Marcus’ scientists had used Khan as a lab-rat.....and not only Khan. In the debris of the “Archive” first the rescue-teams and later the demolition-teams had found disturbing evidences that there had been more than 73 cryo-tubes on board the “SS Botany Bay”, Khan’s ship. They had found Khan’s original cryo-tube, the only one that could be operated from the inside. And of course, Khan had taken care of his crew one by one before he had allowed himself to be frozen as the last one. It was this very and... thank God.... un-damaged tube that now was waiting for Khan as soon as he had healed. But they had found other cryo-tubes and smaller cryo-tubes too in the debris, indicating that there had been children amongst the augments, and more than 73 from the beginning.

Both McCoy and Spock had looked at each other in horror, as they suddenly understood exactly what Khan had meant, when he had said: “He used my friends to control me” and “I had no choice but to escape alone. And when I did, I had every reason to suspect that Marcus had killed every single one of the people I hold most dear.”

Those words were filled with a more ominous meaning when they found the 6 smaller cryo-tubes and the remnants of 10 others! And McCoy found small bits and pieces in the partly destroyed files on the net. Results from experiments......

It would not require a genius to find out that Khan had seen several of his fellow augments being killed since he expected more to be killed when he fled.  
And the partly destroyed files indicated extensive experimentation on augmented biology. It gave McCoy a feeling of horror....one he had had before. McCoy had been interested in history since his childhood and had first been fascinated with the weapons of WW2.

Later he had learned about the KZ-camps and studying to be a doctor, he had found disturbing evidences of experimentations on unwilling humans conducted by the Nazi-doctors in those camps. Results that still, now more than 350 years after, were useful. And now he had the same sinking feeling inside. The results were interesting and remarkably useful. But the way they had been obtained!!! So unethical!!!Torturing augmented children...horrendous!

After Khan had been frozen again and was “stored” together with his crew and just before the Enterprise was to be launched on her 5-year journey, McCoy and Spock met with the others from the star-ship: Scotty, Chekov, Uhura and Sulu to discuss what they had found on the net and it was Spock who had found the blurred pictures of the boarding of the SS Botany Bay. It showed apparently that Admiral Marcus had known exactly what he and his men were looking for. It seemed as if there had been no delay of finding Khan’s cryo-tube and Khan had been awoken already on the ship returning from the “SS Botany Bay”.

The sound-track of the recording showed, when the pictures were too blurred, that the entering men had known what to look for and that there had been 85 still functioning cryo-tubes transferred to the boarding ship. The recording showed that a large part of the ship had been destroyed, but a long time ago.. and the cryo-tubes it had contained in that part, had been destroyed too. Apparently Khan had build cryo-tubes and had fled with more than 200 of his people!

Spock and McCoy and the other discovered that a lot of this last obtained information altered the way they looked at Khan. But right now they couldn’t do much for him and his crew since they were under the surveillance of the Star Fleet Command, and they themselves were about to leave Earth for 5 years.

At that time Spock contacted his father Sarek and his other self, Spock Prime, and showed them what they had found out. Sarek and Spock Prime promised to keep an eye on the facility and suggested that this knowledge secretly should be put on the net. They thought that this information over time could soften the public opinion towards Khan and his crew thus making it more likely that Khan could get a fair trial and his people could be allowed to be thawed and be given a place in society and not being kept frozen forever.  
Spock Prime did feel guilty about having projected his old fear for his “Khan Noonien Singh” on the Khan from this reality and therefore he felt that he could make some atonement by helping Khan and his crew now.

While Jim, Spock and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise attended the memorial speech and later left on their 5 years journey in the repaired and enhanced Enterprise, actually with a lot of Khan’s designs for the “Vengeance”, Sarek and Spock Prime continued their work, both on Earth and on New Vulcan. Their work of secretly showing as much as possible of the otherwise hidden material about Section 31 and the corruption of the Star Fleet Command. And slowly people on Earth and on New Vulcan began to make blogs and sites and even old fashioned books about the Eugenic Wars, the 300 years old Augment-program and how a whole group of people had been wrongly accused of war-crimes. And about the corruption inside the Star Fleet Command. The Eugenic Wars had destroyed a lot of books and other materials, but slowly, gradually, another picture of what the augments had done back then began to show. It was found in old books hidden under floorboards, in ancient archives on old computers and only being made readable by making those old computers work again and even on ancient micro-films only being readable by using old-fashioned magnifying glasses.

And after about half a year’s time strong public voices were heard on Earth and on New Vulcan that the way Khan had been treated and even worse: how his people had been treated, at least required that they should be thawed and given a fair trial.......and then some of the cryo-tubes started to fail......

Now the voices grew even stronger and were close to roars when people learned what Admiral Marcus and his scientists had done to Khan and his people. Even if Khan’s actions had killed more than 1500 people, the public opinion now wanted to hear why he had reacted as he did instead of just condemn him to be an icicle forever, or be killed when his 300 year old cryo-tube inevitable would malfunction.

That was the time when Sarek and Spock Prime launched the plan that they and to some extent some of the officers of the Enterprise had concocted. The augments should be brought to New Vulcan to be a part of the population there. They should be given full citizen’s rights and the only limitation should be that there would be kept an eye on them until they had shown that they could behave themselves. They had been made to be soldiers after all. Maybe they would find it difficult to live in a time of peace? But on the other hand had Khan’s people lived peacefully amongst each other and their loyal normal human fellow inhabitants for more than 5 years as Khan ruled over one third of the countries on Earth.

And before there would be made a trial against Khan on New Vulcan there should be a hearing where he would be given a chance to defend his actions.  
The public opinion now demanded a trial against the heads of the Star Fleet Command and The Federation as apparently a lot more people than first anticipated had known about Admiral Marcus’ abuse of a man and his people and about the Admiral’s warmongering and a message was sent towards the Enterprise that it should return as fast as possible.  
The message could travel trans-warp and reach the Enterprise through several steps and relays, but even if the ship turned around as soon as the message arrived, it would still be almost a year before it could return to Earth......and now 2 cryo-tubes more had stopped functioning.......

Precautions were taken, but without a specific knowledge about how the cryo-tubes worked, they couldn’t be sure that what they did would and could save the frozen augments!

______________

Two and a half year after the Enterprise had left on what everybody had thought to be a 5-year long journey, the ship was in space again after a brief visit to Earth. This time the Enterprise was heading against New Vulcan and with several cargo-rooms filled with cryo-tubes. They hadn’t dared to thaw the people inside. What they had been able to figure out about the time when Khan was thawed by Marcus and his men, was that Khan barely had survived despite his augmented abilities for healing. And they thought that the augments would be safer inside the cryo-tubes than outside if they were not thawed the right way. And people really hoped that their precautions to prevent more cryo-tubes to fail or, if they failed, the means to keep the augments frozen, would be sufficient.

Khan’s more advanced cryo-tube was in a room of its own. Monitored more carefully than the others, since they were afraid that Marcus or his scientists had tampered with it. And because it apparently was more advanced it was maybe more prone to malfunction. Even if Khan had been a genius while making them 300 years ago, they were 300 years old and being that old they were most likely to malfunction at any time soon.


	2. Awakening

The pain searing through his whole body. The feeling of his body being torn slowly apart. Khan could not say that he had not experienced it before, because he had! When Marcus had thawed him the wrong way......and later tortured him...but Marcus was dead....wasn’t he?!

His almost limp body slumped down on the floor. The cryo-tube had opened. But where was he?!

The pain was cutting through his whole existence.....unbearable.....and yet he had to endure it. He could smell his own body: blood and sweat and something else...foreign.  
He managed to crawl to the wall and sit up against it. But the energy spent on that almost made him faint. His vision was blurred and he had a splitting headache.....braindamage? Khan coughed and sighed as he spat and saw the blood from his lungs. Definitely thawed the wrong way again....and maybe even worse than the last time.

  
The brain damage could explain why everything was...a bit.....off?

The sounds around him indicated that he was on board a....star-ship? The walls would indicate the same thing: smooth and off-white and blue. Not the SS Enterprise then. If he remembered the colours right. White and black had they been on board that ship. The smell was different too. Even the smell of his own body. And he remembered the crash with the Vengeance....and what Spock had done. Both to his no longer existing crew...and to him.

  
He heard footsteps coming towards his door, but he was too tired or exhausted to turn his head and look at the blurred figure that entered as the door opened with a swoosh....even that sound didn’t fit with his memories.

The person that squatted down in front of him looked disturbingly familiar though. The uniform a bit different from what he remembered. If his memories were right. What he by now doubted. But even his blurred and inadequate vision showed the black hair with bangs, the dark brown, almost black eyes and the blue uniform tunic.

Khan coughed again and spat the blood out on the floor: “Are you here to finish your job, Mr. Spock?”

“Finish my job?!” said Spock. Oh yes. The arrogant voice hadn’t changed, realized Khan.

Khan tried to look at Spock. Forced his muscles and eyes to cooperate and mumbled: “As I recall it you tried your best to kill me...after you had killed my crew and crippled my ship!”

And he continued: “Not that I would mind being killed now...being the last one of my species alive. You did a nice job there!”

Spock looked at Khan and even Khan’s blurred vision couldn’t conceal the fact that Spock looked very astonished, as astonished as he was able to.

“I’m sorry. But you must confuse me with someone else. I can assure you that we haven’t met before. And I logically can’t find any reason why I should have tried to kill you or your crew!”, he said.

And suddenly Khan understood. It wasn’t the universe where Marcus had found him. It had to be another universe. Just one of many.

He shook his head: “I’m in a terribly state and in pain.....it must have been something I have dreamt...”

It was the last thing he said. His voice was slurred and Spock saw the strange man’s eyes roll backwards in his head before he started to cramp and shortly after went limb.  
There wasn’t much time to call for med-bay so Spock picked up the pale man. He was a bit surprised how heavy the man actually was and ran towards med-bay.

Thank God it was just down the corridor.


	3. Med-bay and Dr. McCoy

Khan woke up in the med-bay. At least it looked like a med-bay and there was this man standing...

“Bones?!” Khan asked.

The doctor came over to him: “Hello there....no. No broken bones on you. But your readings are off the chart. According to them you should be more than dead! You are not alien, so what the hell are you!?”

Well, apparently his name wasn’t “Bones” in this reality. “McCoy” then, as it said on his name-tag on the uniform. Was this doctor decent...reliable? At least the McCoy of the other reality had only taken blood from him and not tried to make him into a lab-rat. Could he risk telling him the truth? That he was an augment?

Khan looked into the man’s eyes. There were no fear there, just curiosity. Well, trust had to start somewhere...

“Where am I?” asked Khan.

“You are on board the “STS Enterprise”.....a ship in the Star Fleet Confederation. Captain is Christopher Pike. You were found adrift in a bit strange looking old star ship. The faded name said “....otany....ay” the rest was unreadable. There were others on board and we saved as many as possible. But your ship had been hit by smaller asteroids and was partly destroyed....”

Khan moved quickly and had his hand on McCoy’s hand in a fierce grip: “Please......how many did you save?!”

Khan had not paid attention to what “Spock” had mentioned before and had assumed that the rest of his crew was dead.

“Woha...there.....quite a strong grip you have there, for a man more than half dead!” said McCoy and tried to get his hand back.

Khan looked down: “Oh....I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to hurt you. But please....how many did you save from my ship?”

McCoy looked at him: “We saved more than 90 and...... **My** ship?!”

Khan closed his eyes: “90.....Better than last time and....Yes, my ship. I was the captain. I build the ship...and the cryo-tubes. I suppose by the look of this ship and the brief glance I’ve had on the equipment here in this med-bay that we are a bit further forward in time than when I tried to flee from Earth?”

McCoy looked at him with his brows knitted: “The ship, it was old.”Pre-warp” Scotty called it. And the way you were frozen would prevent ageing. How old are you?! And what time are you from?!”

Khan smiled: “Well..it depends. Which year are we currently in?”

“2258” answered McCoy.

“Hm.....that makes me almost 300 years old, since we fled from Earth in 1996, and at that time my biological age was 28. The freezing process nearly eliminates ageing. My best guess is that I’m now to compare with a human about 29 years old.”

”You said...“Human”.... you don’t regard yourself as a human?!” was McCoy’s reply.

Khan looked at him again. Could he risk telling this man who he was? Would the revelation of his true self destroy everything and destroy his chances of saving his people, if his people were the same in this reality. And it was a different reality:the smell, the sounds, the name of the ship and the captain. Khan decided to trust McCoy, despite all odds.

“I’m not human. I’m an “augment”. A remnant of a time long past. Genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war. But we were condemned as criminals, forced into exile, at the time we lost the last battle. History is never nice towards the loosing part. For centuries we slept, hoping when we awoke things would be different. I was generated in a petri-dish, growing in a surrogate mother’s womb and grew up in a laboratory. Trained to be a soldier, trained to defend our creators who kept telling us that we were superior and yet killed us, tortured us and abused us as their mood took them!”

“Continue, please...” said McCoy.

“We were created all over the world and when we “augments” met at the battlefields to fight wars, that wasn’t our own, we found that we had more in common than we had things that separated us. We turned against our creators: our tortures, our abusers. We stopped the wars...and did what we were breed to. We made peace. Divided the world between us and tried to rule wisely..... “

Now McCoy understood and he said: “The Eugenic wars! You were one of the “Tyrants”!”

Khan bowed his head: “I was...” and then he waited.

“Which one?” asked McCoy.

“I was Khan Noonien Singh” and then Khan waited again. It was quite a chance to take, but something told him that it would be all right.

“The best of Tyrants” whispered McCoy and continued: “The only one who didn’t perform massacres, who didn’t have KZ-camps and who never started a war. The one who allowed humans to rule as well.”

Khan huffed: “It would be a bit foolish to think that I alone could rule more than 2 billion people without some aid! But just as in the ancient Roman Empire: the Emperor is never better than his vassal kings, his governors and his civil servants. If they fail, their failures are blamed on the Emperor. In my case the “Khan”. I was better even amongst my own, in being naive too. Believing that we augments had the same goal: a united Earth! Apparently my fellow augments from the other facilities on Earth didn’t share my dream and began to fight one another and I had to abandon first my Chinese allies and then the ones in the Middle East. In less than a year every progress that we had made towards “few have too much and even fewer too little”: that was hospitals, schools, education, houses and food enough for everybody......every dream disappeared in those futile fights. More than 2 billion people died either in direct fight, from starvation or diseases. “Hunger” and “Pest”.....always the two mad horsemen following their leader “War”.....and we never learn. You humans never learn!”

The two men sat in silence for a while and then McCoy made the last reading on Khan’s body. He smiled: “If you hadn’t told me what you were, at least your readings would prove it. You have totally recovered. Which brings me to the next topic. If people outside this med-bay learn about your skills and abilities, you will be in great danger!”


	4. How to save a life

Khan looked at him: “Explain, please”

But McCoy just looked at him for a moment and then he said something that made Khan start a bit: “Well, trust have to start somewhere and you dared to tell me your true name. Never mention it outside this med-bay....or maybe you can mention it in the machine-room, where Scotty rules, without fear! In the rest of this ship it could be dangerous and jeopardise your crew! I’m very interested in ancient history, that is why I know a great deal more than the most, even if a lot of material was destroyed during the Eugenic War. And there were remnants that showed that your ”Tyranny” was a better place to live, even for humans. For others in this time, well I guess they just throw you in the same basket as the rest of the mad augments, and would very much like you dead, especially because you were a leader...and the name “Khan Noonien Sing” still rings a bell. The Eugenic War did cost humanity a lot!”

Khan just looked at McCoy and sighed: “I understand. And I’ll keep my name a secret. What I do not understand, is why I have faint memories about being woken in a time like this, by another man. I remember names, a ship and a terrible fate. A dream maybe? Even if I made, invented, those cryo-tubes, I’m not totally sure that even if the body is immobilised, the cells hibernate and there is no heartbeat, that the brain doesn’t dream, the mind doesn’t wander. Nothing and most certainly no brain-waves are to be detected, but what do we know about the mind...the soul? Just to prove my point: the name “Scotty” is not unfamiliar to me, and I “remember” something about a companion.....a little green being?”

McCoy looked a bit shocked: “You are right. It is very strange! Scotty had met an alien....a Roylan...on Delta Vega. They were there together, both assigned for two years, and they became friends. But please don’t mention him when you speak to Scotty. Keenser died only 2 months ago and Scotty misses him deeply.”

Khan looked at McCoy and wondered what would be different from his “dream”, that is his “memories” and this reality.

McCoy continued: “You must know that I bring not only myself in danger by telling you this, but a lot of my friends too!”

Khan looked at him: “It is mutual then. You can tell the “wrong” persons my real name....and I’m screwed!”

McCoy laughed a bit: “Yeah...I suppose so. And you were the first to show trust. Well then. Where should I begin? What do you want to know?”

“You called it the “Star Fleet Confederation”. Tell me about that. About the ship and the crew.”

“Fine....but first we have a life to save!”

“Whom?”

“You! If certain persons from the ship-command came in here and discovered that you have healed totally. Don’t you think they’ll get suspicious?”

“I’ll guess so. Couldn’t you make a loop of the earlier readings and let them be shown on the display of the bio-bed?”

McCoy looked at Khan: “I begin to believe that you have indeed been in this future before!”

Khan smiled: “We had computers in the 20th century too! And to emphasize my condition, well do you have something that destroys lung-tissue by inhalation?”

McCoy frowned: “What do you want to do with that?!”

“Inhale it....and cough blood if someone from command should enter. The readings on the display would be proven right, if I still have symptoms. And coughing blood and spitting it out on the floor would be rather convincing, don’t you think?”

McCoy just looked at Khan: “But....but it might kill you!”

Khan smirked: “Do you think so? I came in here.....dying from internal bleeding in my body and in my brain...and here I am. Only about 1 hour later and feeling fine! I’ll have to be ill to stay here and if a patient coughing blood doesn’t belong here in the safety of the med-bay, where does he then belong?”

McCoy smiled and one of the nurses, who had heard their conversation came over with a bottle in her hand: “It is the sample from Elba II. An extract from the plants that made the atmosphere so toxic. This is an extract. Only lethal if inhaled direct from the bottle. If any of the gas should escape out in the room it’ll only cause mild symptoms for the rest of us.”

“Thank you” said Khan and smiled....

“And then we would have to invent a new identity for you..and a damn good explanation why you were in the captain’s cryo-tube!”

 

Khan smiled again and then his whole personality changed.

Before that McCoy really could see that Khan had been a leader, the “best of Tyrants”, but now, only a subtle change, and now Khan wasn’t regal any more.

“I was the captain of this ship. Our leader “Khan Noonien Singh” had ordered me to build it and build the cryo-tubes. He was a good leader and he had anticipated that such precautions could be necessary. My name is John Harrison. I do not know why the facility in Germany chose to send me to India. I am an augment too. But not a very good one. I was never a soldier....just a technician. That I am not one of their best creations, well....that I would have to be in med-bay for such a long time because of being thawed. Well.. I think that shows that they didn’t give me soldier-healing-abilities!”

McCoy smiled: “But they gave you acting abilities, I can see that. What happened to Khan Noonien Singh then, and you do look a bit like him in the old pictures...”

Khan looked at McCoy: “That is a problem. What do we do if there still are pictures of me hanging around? And.....” then his whole demeanour changed again: “...our leader, our Khan, had ordered us to leave. I was supposed to wait until he arrived in a space-shuttle and docked with us before I should freeze him too. His cryo-tube, a much bigger one and more advanced, was in the part of the ship, that was destroyed. If there still were remnants of that part left, you would see that those cryo-tubes were bigger and better. But he never came. I waited for 1 month, hidden behind the Moon, and then I decided to freeze myself make the ship fly away towards Jupiter. The idea was that we should all be thawed when we came close to the moon Europe, but something must have gone wrong for we never woke...until now.”

McCoy looked at Khan and asked: “The other cryo-tubes were better in reality because...?”

Khan just looked at him: “They were better and more advanced because they were for the humans. At the end we were in a bit of a hurry and I didn’t have time to make such advanced cryo-tubes for us augments. It wouldn’t be necessary. But I didn’t anticipate that they would last 300 years!”

________________________

It turned out that the young Chekov, who was a computer genius in this reality too, managed to alter all the picture files on the net by sending a “Trojan horse”....a small virus.....that altered the skin colour on the pictures of Khan to a much darker tone. As Khan had had long hair after Sikh custom way back 300 years ago and just had cut his hair just before they fled, he wasn’t easy to recognise, even more so because the clothes they had worn in the cryo-tubes just had been plain white clothing and nothing golden or made of silk.

And with those precautions, that came in handy only 1 hour later, Khan remained in the med-bay for more than 8 days and learned a lot about this reality....


	5. The Conspiracy

Before captain Pike had shown up in the med-bay, McCoy had continued his conversation with Khan telling how things were:  
“The captain on this ship is a fine man, but weak. That is why he, despite his fine results and age just still is a captain and not an admiral.....”

And Khan remembered that he had shot an Admiral Christopher Pike in the dream, or whatever his strange memories could be called.

McCoy continued, “The whole Star Fleet Federation is corrupt and controls nearly everything on Earth. The supreme-admiral Richard Barnett controls nearly every government. If you want to travel, the Federation decides where and with what. If you want gods transported, it is the same thing. The 5 regions on Earth have their own president and the council above it all, but in reality Barnett and his loyal followers control everything. If you want an education, then the Star Fleet decides if you can get to the only decent schools: their schools. Medical care? It is only decent within the Star Fleet and it is like that the whole way round. But if you are inside, if you are a member of the Star Fleet, then you are on the safe side. The salary is very decent and if the worst should happen......and it is dangerous out here.....then the widow’s pension would allow your family to cope well and they still keep their right to the good schools and hospitals. Thank God I love being out here in the space....(another difference thought Khan. He remembered remarks from “Bones”....that he hated being in space) and my connection to the Star Fleet pays the hospital bills for my sick daughter and gives my wonderful wife a decent life, even if we can’t see each other so often as we wish.”

And McCoy continued to tell about the two very ambitious and ruthless young protégées of Barnett’s: James Tiberius Kirk and Spock. Both hoping and actually waiting to be the next captain of the STS Enterprise, despite their young age. Those two had been the only two, who had fulfilled the Kobayashi Maru-test at the Academy and won it, but only because they cheated.

He told about their twisted relationship that had started at the academy. How they had found each other in a mutual interest for sex. With each other and as many as possible of the other species on the academy. They were known for their shagging of, as it was put: “everything breathing and most of the time standing on two legs” and not only shagging but wanting BDSM-relationships, even if it was a short one, as well. “And they would not be on the receiving end of the whip......if you understand me”, had McCoy said.

James had grown up in the shadow of a great father, George Kirk, who became promoted as captain at a rather young age of the STS Kelvin, as the ship’s captain was abducted and killed by Romulans. Khan learned that in this reality Nero had never turned up. He had never been coming out of a wormhole and that both the Romulan home planet and 'Vulcan' still existed. The Romulans and the Klingons were fighting one another and that kept them thank God away from Earth and their allies. In this reality the Galactic Council was weak and couldn’t do anything, if its members were attacked. The Star Fleet Confederation on the other hand had a lot of power.....as it was the very Confederation that was sitting heavily on the “Trans-warp”-secret. Other races....the Klingons, the Romulans and a lot of other races in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants of the Galaxy knew of course of “warp” but it had been humans, who had discovered and invented “trans-warp”-devices less than 70 years ago and that had given them immense power.

Spock was a “man of two worlds” as McCoy put it. He was the son of Ambassador Sarek and a human woman, Amanda Grayson, and had regrettably been raised at Vulcan. The expression “regrettably” had come from Spock’s own father, as he too late realised that his son, even if his outside look was very Vulcan, he had even the Vulcan green blood and pointy ears, he had never been able to control his feelings properly. And that had given him a very troubled childhood. As Sarek had put it, “My son has the feelings of a Vulcan, but unfortunately only the aid of a human nature to control it.”

Spock had caused a lot of trouble, but had finally settled as he met James at the Academy.

Then McCoy had told about the “conspiracy”, a group of people both on Vulcan and on Earth, who was trying to put an end to the iron grip that the Star Fleet Confederation had on everything. They were not so stupid that they would destroy the whole organisation and thus give the Romulans and Klingons an opportunity to win a war against Earth and its allies. They just have to move the very corrupt top and put a few decent men there instead.

But as Khan heard the name of the most decent man in the Star Fleet Confederation, a man who had hidden his talents and only had made it to the rank of captain and at whom the whole conspiracy had great hopes and wanted to be the new supreme-admiral, Khan paled visibly and almost vomited on the floor. Khan was a bit surprised at his own reaction, but the name “Alexander Marcus” and even worse: the picture of the very man, made Khan sick.  
______________________

The captain showed up in the med-bay together with his first officer, Spock, just after McCoy had told Khan that the conspiracy hoped Alexander Marcus would be the new leader of the Star Fleet Confederation, and Khan’s paleness, and his spitting blood and the readings from the bio-bed, did convince the a bit naive captain and the more suspicious Spock that Khan was indeed not Khan Noonien Singh, but just “John Harrison”.

Khan was still in danger being an augment, but when he started to talk about his precious ship and his invented cryo-tubes in detail; both Pike, Spock and McCoy looked at each other and rolled their eyes and the captain said,  “Well Mr. Harrison. I really do believe that you are a born technician. You sound exactly like Scotty when he starts to break into self-oscillation talking about his beloved machines. You better tell him about your inventions as soon as you are better. As for your question about your crew. We found you, as we were delivering mining-equipment for the mining-team on the Jupiter-moon “Europe” and now we are on our way to Titan with a group of scientists. I can understand that you are from the 20th century and that you didn’t have “warp” then. We do now....but it is not wise to use in a solar system...unless the system is extremely well-known. And since we are not in a hurry, I’ve preferred not to use it. Therefore we will be back on Earth in about a month. Until then you must understand, Mr. Harrison, that we cannot thaw your crew. We need bigger and better facilities that even this advanced med-bay can offer!”

“I understand and appreciate your concern, Captain” said Khan pretending, that he believed him. McCoy had of course told Khan the real reason. They knew that the augments had been soldiers and had no wish to have them running around on the ship.

______________________

Staying in the med-bay and later in the machine-compartment together with Scotty, Khan was accepted both by the officers and by the conspiracy and when they returned to Earth about a month later, Khan followed Scotty to his apartment and stayed there, until they should leave for the next trip. And still his crew wasn’t thawed. One excuse after the other turned up from the Star Fleet Confederation who had the cryo-tubes stored...and Khan pretended to believe every one of the excuses.

Khan was worried that he had a brain damage that his nano-robots and his platelets couldn’t repair. He lost hours, not remembering what he had done and sometimes he was at a meeting with the other members of the conspiracy, without remembering how he got there. McCoy scanned him and found nothing wrong....but Khan worried none the less.


	6. The "Kobayashi Maru" test

The “Conspiracy” had a lot of meetings and that didn’t worry Khan that much, even if he sometimes found it difficult to remember what had happened. What worried him a great deal more was how he reacted, when he met Alexander Marcus.

Khan constantly had to remind himself that this version of Marcus was a decent man. So decent that he offered to be in another room, when they had their meetings, so Khan wouldn’t have to see him. Khan was surprised at his own reaction, but he couldn’t alter his own bodily reactions despite being an augment and that was another reason for worries. His body wasn’t that strong in this reality. Not as strong as he remembered it to be. When he looked in a mirror it was still his own face.....but everything else felt always a bit....off.

They discussed their plans, the dishonesty of Kirk and Spock and Kirk's and Spock's cheating in the Kobayashi Maru-test was discussed again.

Khan wanted to know more about that test and McCoy showed him a version of it on his Padd and had said something about it being an old test. Khan had laughed and said that it indeed was very old, but it used not to be about Star Ships but real ships on the blue sea.

It had been one of the tests that had been used on Earth as early as in the 17th century, in the navy, and Khan couldn’t understand why they regarded it so difficult?! He thought himself to be able to beat the computer programme any second!

  
Chekov and McCoy turned up with a version very close to the one from the Confederation’s academy one evening at Scotty’s apartment. The only difference would be the size of the screen and the controls. McCoy worried a bit that the main server of the Star Fleet could detect what happened....but Chekov assured that his version of the “game” was totally independent.

Quite a lot of the people that were friends of McCoy and Scotty and thus a part of the conspiracy against the Confederation, turned up after having heard that John Harrison would try to beat the computer’s test. More than 50 people were squeezed into the apartment’s living room.

  
Khan sat at a table with the biggest padd available in front of him. He was now used to this technology and looked actually forward to try this test. In the ancient times it was made on a table with small ships in 3D....and the version he had been trained with, as an upcoming soldier at the facility back then as a child, had been a rather primitive computer-version, but still with ships at sea.

Khan told that in the ancient times it wasn’t Klingons, but pirates, they were fighting against and the ships were from the Royal English Navy. But apart from the weapons and the opponents, the dilemma remained the same:

The primary goal of the exercise was to rescue a civilian vessel, then a neutral barque, now a star-ship: the Kobayashi Maru, in a simulated battle with the Klingons/ then “pirates”. The ship had sent a distress signal and the disabled ship was located in the Klingon Neutral Zone/ the Spanish controlled part of the Atlantic. And any Starfleet ship/ Royal Navy ship entering the zone would cause an interstellar/diplomatic incident.

The test-person must decide whether to attempt rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew – endangering their own ship and lives – or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. And the computer-test was made in such a way that if the cadet chose to attempt rescue, the simulation was designed to guarantee that the ship was destroyed with the loss of all crew members.

Khan took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to do the same thing I did back on Earth....but please. Do not disturb me before it is finished and then I’m going to tell you why I acted as I did. OK?”

And then he started the test: The Kobayashi Maru-distress signal could be heard. The sound had been turned up so everyone in the living–room could hear it. Khan carefully flew a bit closer, barely touching the invisible border to the neutral zone and then Khan did something totally unexpected: He fired his ship’s weapons precisely and the warp-core of the Kobayashi Maru, thus causing it to explode and hit and destroy from behind the 4 Klingon vessels that had approached. In only 5 minutes the game was over. Khan’s ship was unharmed and the Klingon ships had been destroyed so fast that they had no chance to defend themselves.

There were silence in the apartment and then Khan turned around and faced the people, “I know that you think that I killed the whole crew of Kobayashi Maru. But I didn’t. It was a trap.....as old as the game itself. Listen again to the distress signal!”

And they listened, and now they could hear it, as Khan had told them how to listen for it. He explained, “It is in “Standard”, but it is a Klingon talking. The speech-patterns are Klingon, the choice of words. It was like that in the old test back on Earth...both the one with model-ships on the table and the “game” on computer: in those days ships communicated with flags...”Semaphore” it was called. And in the “game” and on the table, the ship in need semaphored for help, but not in the right way. There were subtle mistakes if you were observant. I was observant....and the solution was to send a man in a rowing-boat secretly, covered by the darkness of the night to the mentioned trap-ship, get it loose from its anchor, observe the current and the wind and sneak down to the black-powder room, and light a match...or use a tinderbox....”

And then the people in the living room understood, but it was McCoy who asked: “And then the ship would be blown to pieces?”

Khan shook his head, “No....but catch fire and drift towards the pirates other 4 ships, and then they would catch fire as well. End of game! And if you look at the star ship log in this game, I did not cross the invisible line to the “neutral zone”, just touched it. In the old “games” there were not weapons that could reach the trap-ship from the distance where your own ship was situated, and therefore you would have to choose a volunteer to die...”

“And you would be asked whom you chose...wouldn’t you?”

“I was asked, yes and I told that I would have gone. I could not ask one of my crew-members to do that. I would have given my command to my 1st officer and I would have rowed the boat and that brings me to the topic of today’s meeting: How do we get close enough to the top of the Star Fleet Confederation, the 25 men that in reality controls this quadrant of the Galaxy?”

McCoy looked at him: “You have an idea, don’t you?”

“I do, but both you, Chekov and you Scotty would have to make a promise. You all from the conspiracy would have to make a promise!”

“To do what?”, asked Marcus as he came in.....and Khan paled again.

“I’m sorry, “John”, but I’ll have to hear what it is that you want, before I can promise...”

Khan swallowed and tried to ignore his nausea. It irritated him so much that his body reacted that way, but he had told both Scotty and McCoy....and Marcus, what the Marcus in the other reality had done to him and those of his fellow augments, that he didn’t manage to get away from “Sector 31”....and they understood why Khan felt so bad being close to this Marcus.

“You told me that James and Spock are into BDSM...and most certainly not at the receiving end. I can force my body to react positively at pain. Pretend to be a masochist. Then I would be able to be in a relationship with those two men and I could be a “wet dream come true” for them, being able to heal fast. They are a part of “the 25”.....and I would be allowed near them. Believe me. I would be able to make them very depending on me. And before I engage myself in a relationship, you Scotty would have to make micro-bombs together with me. Chekov would have to programme them and McCoy...you will have to help me operate them into my body. At a suitable time, when I’m together with enough of those 25, preferably them all, the bombs will be activated.....and “the top” would be removed......”

And Khan continued in the silence that filled the apartment:,“I just want you all to promise me that you’ll save my crew. Thaw them and give them a place to live. Not necessary here on Earth...but somewhere else. I’ll give you a coded message to give to them so they’ll know that I did this voluntarily. Time is passing and the cryo-tubes can fail any moment in that storage-place where they have put them. You, Marcus, have told me that they are still there, still functioning, but for how long? We...I......do not have so much time any more to wait!”

All the people in the apartment sat in total silence. Just looking at “John”, but it was Marcus who spoke and said the words everyone thought: “There really is nothing you wouldn’t do for your family...your crew! But this....this is too much!”

Khan answered: “Why? If we were going in to an open fire. A real battle against the Confederation, people would be killed, wounded. This way I’m the only one. And I’m the only one who can be convincing enough to be in that twisted relationship!”

And the decision was made. And they were sure that it would be easier to get to Khan’s crew anyway....and remove them... after the turmoil of the bomb-attack.  
They didn’t like it at all, but they could see that right now it was one of their few options and the fastest. Khan was right. They were running out of time. Both regarding his frozen crew and their own options towards the corrupt top of the Confederation.


	7. Relationships

6 days after the “Kobayashi Maru” test Khan turned up in McCoy’s apartment with a box full of tiny metal objects...the bombs..... and a scan of Khan’s body with dots where the bombs should be placed and three small devises at the size of a quarter of a thumb-nail from Chekov....the activators.

McCoy looked at them and said: “I know it is too dangerous to use a hospital’s or even a clinic’s facilities to operate these...”thingies” into you. The Confederation might find out. But to use my dining table as a operating table and perform surgery under non-sterile circumstances....that is insane, Khan!”

Khan just looked at him: “It can hardly be called surgery when it is performed with a large syringe....and you even have the advantage of a padd that can be used as a scanner so you can see what you are doing when the syringe is in my body...and even if you should perforate something it’ll heal within minutes. The activators a very small and the amount of blood I’m going to lose when you cut through my skin will be insignificant...and as for sedation. I told you that my body is trained to endure quite a lot of pain.....I’ll do it myself if I could reach all the places......but you are a doctor....even a surgeon.....so you can do it!”  
____________________  
And of course McCoy could do it....and did it. And he had to admit that Khan could endure a lot of pain. The only indication that there was pain to endure was an intake of air through his nose and a slowly exhale through his mouth....that was all.

“I’ll have to admit that it didn’t bleed as much as I had feared and that you took the pain nicely” McCoy said as he washed his hands and cleaned the table. He had only used patches on the wounds from inserting the activators and they could be removed after just a few minutes. There were not even wounds left.

Khan just smiled at him and just said: “Nano-robots....they seal off the blood-vessels... and intensive training. You humans have done it before too. Agents....secret agents.... were trained in that and Native Indian tribes used to “torture” their young men in a sort of initiation to be a warrior: they would be hanging in the skin of their back or their front until the skin burst and they were initiated. I can force my body to make extra endorphins.....and after the first ping of pain I can tell my brain that it is just a “sensory input”....it hurts but I do not have to panic!”

“I see” said McCoy: “but what do we do about the rest? The BDSM part? How would you make those two young men interested in you and how would you pretend to be a masochist?”

Khan just smiled and didn’t answer McCoy’s question, just pointed towards the sofa and asked: “Do you mind if we sit down and talk there?”

McCoy fetched two beers and they sat down. McCoy had changed his clothes and Khan was still wearing his bathrobe and a pair of regular uniform trousers....again Khan found that they were somehow “wrong”...he had memories of a different style and a different colour. These here were pitch black and rather loose and calf-length so they did fit to the high boots. Khan remembered a charcoal gray colour, a close fit and a length to the ankles.....from “the other place”.

He was sitting relaxed in the sofa...the hand that was furthest away from McCoy was holding the beer, the other hand just lying between them. Khan closed his eyes and rested his head on the backrest of the sofa and said, almost sleepily: “Totally out of context, McCoy, and rather private...but you have just implanted three activators in me and 25 micro-bombs while I was naked....do you regard yourself as totally heterosexual? My body didn’t do anything to you?”

McCoy frowned at him...but then he laughed: “Well, I can admire a nice body...and yours is very nice. Handsome even, maybe even gorgeous. It is aesthetic pleasant to look at....like a Greek statue. But....yes I’m 100% heterosexual.....I find the body of a woman....but not all women.....arousing. Especially my wife’s!”

“Why are you not with her now?”

“We are going to take off in a few days, according to the plans.....if they are not altered. There is actually not enough time for me to travel to my home and then back again before we leave. I’ll only be able to stay at home in my farm for less than 5 hours before I would have to leave again. You see....the Star Fleet Confederation do not want to spend money on infra-structure on their own planet....especially not in areas where there are not many from the organisation resident. You wouldn’t believe the state the trains are in in those areas....And besides I told her that I had something very important to do here “regarding new tools for the farm....and crops”...and she knew that it meant something with the Conspiracy....they are our code-words.”

“I see” said Khan.

They sat in silence for a while and then McCoy felt it....it started with his hand accidentally touched Khan’s...and it sent shivers down McCoy’s spine. “What are you doing?” he whispered. His moth was suddenly dry despite having just taken a sip of the beer.

“Forcing you to cheat on your wife....for science...and for the conspiracy...” was Khan’s answer.

“Pheromones?” asked McCoy.

Khan’s head was lifted from the backrest and he looked directly at McCoy: “Yes...do you want me to stop? I’ve haven’t reached the point of no return yet! And believe me....I haven’t even started yet!”

McCoy heard himself say: “No...don’t stop!”

He was curious.....and he suddenly found Khan’s face very attractive.

Khan almost purred in that deep sexy(!) voice: “I find your body very attractive too, Leonard.....very!”

And McCoy now experienced a very fast and almost painful erection....he had not responded that fast....and never just to a voice.....since he was a very horny 16 year old boy!

Khan moved elegantly...like a dancer or an acrobat....and McCoy had noticed his gracefulness before, but now.......It was overwhelming. Khan had taken of the bathrobe and his chest was naked and now he removed his trousers too. He was naked underneath and didn’t sport a single hair in his groin area. His cock and balls were a nuance darker than his almost alabaster skin tone, just a brush of pink and beige mingled. It looked very delicious and now Khan knelt between McCoy’s legs....knelt on the floor and pushed himself in between McCoy’s thighs.

His head was bowed and he whispered: “Please, Master, let me serve you!” as he lifted his head a bit and looked up through his eyelashes.

“Why?....” was everything McCoy was able to say: “Why do you call me “master”?

“I have to practice..” was the answer. “May I?”

McCoy could only nod....to himself he could always excuse his actions by Khan’s pheromones.....and for the cause of...... science?.....of the noble goal of the Conspiracy? He knew his wife would understand and forgive....but could he forgive himself? And that was the last coherent thought McCoy had for a while....

Khan had first licked the head of his cock...and that felt....good! And then Khan had swallowed his whole length in one long movement and the only thing that came out of McCoy’s mouth was: “Arghhhhh...oh my God..” and for the next few minutes it was just moans...until he said: “Khan....I’m going to....”

But Khan just hummed and took his cock even deeper in his throat.....and that hum and the deep throating did it finally for McCoy and he came so hard, that his vision turned white at the edges and electricity ran through his body....

When he came to his senses Khan was still kneeling between his knees, smirking and saying: “I hope it was satisfying enough, master?”

McCoy smiled warmly: “I might get used to that “master”......It was the best blowjob I’ve ever had. Don’t you have a gag-reflex? And get up from the floor. We need to talk!”


	8. Is Khan a masochist?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Warning: This is a chapter with a lot of BDSM. Different tools and devises are used on Khan...but at his own request. He needs to find out if he is a masochist or if he at least can act like one. ___

When they were sitting in the sofa again, McCoy had got his cock back in his trousers again....even if it felt like it didn’t fit there any more. He had almost a “hard on” again.....And Khan had put on the bathrobe again, but not the uniform- trousers.

McCoy couldn’t’ help thinking about that body hidden behind the fabric. He blamed it on the pheromones, but he had to admit now that he indeed found Khan’s body interesting! Very!

He cleared his throat and said: “OK...I get that you can perform the “slave”-part....the “being submissive” part....at least by being able to be humble.....but actually....what about the rest of this BDSM part? I get that it is S for sadism and M for masochism and I know medically about those terms, but the B&D?....and how would you do the rest? Pretending being a masochist?”

Khan answered: “B for bondage, D for discipline and for Domination and that makes the S for Submission too. So it should be, BDDSSM. And the sadism and the masochism.....it is not the “medical” version, normally....the exaggerated one. We are not talking “Snuff” here!”

“Oh..” said McCoy: “how can you be sure that no one in that company would get off by killing someone during a sexual act...that is what “Snuff” is in that sort of community, isn’t it?”

“I’ve researched......the clubs both Spock and Jim attend are not that extreme. I know that Chekov got involved when he came to town and were looking for company....and that he mistook one of their clubs’ name for a more innocent version he knew back in Moscow....and that you had to treat him for welts and minor wounds afterwards.....but that “Club-Friends-With-Benefits” is not one of the extremes....nor is the other one that is more forward in its name: “Bones...Delicious Steaks & Marshmallows”.....well they couldn’t be more specific...could they? No one is going to believe that it is a restaurant. There is blood and humiliation.....but there are doctors too and I know that some of the submisives/masochists are prostitutes and are doing it for money....but most of them are genuine enough....they do get off on the pain and humiliation.”

He paused and then he continued: “Back in time....when I was a child in that Facility in India....The scientists there....I do not know why they did it. There is no reason for soldiers to be pretty...handsome. But we were! No the ones, where the genome had failures. In reality the scientists sometimes worked in the dark and couldn’t do their “stitching together” our DNA precisely...but the successes. We were pretty, handsome...good looking. I know some of it comes from healthy genes...they make even facial features, but that doesn’t alone make “pretty” or “handsome”. You said it yourself, Leonard, “like a Greek statue”.....And it makes me wonder. Why put that feature in us at all....the ability to ooze pheromones? To engage in sex? It is not needed in the battle area.....but could be very useful in other “areas”.....like those with burgundy plush on the walls!”

McCoy understood: “You think you were made to be....hm....sex-toys too?”

Khan: “I do.....and the training to be good soldiers....to be able to endure pain forced our bodies to be able to create and emit more endorphins than normal. Maybe that was a feature put into us too with a purpose. Put that ability together with the arousal from the pheromones...I’ve got the theory that that can make me pretend to be a masochists...or even be one. That is why I’m going to ask of you to find out together with me if my theory is valid!”

McCoy looked a bit worried: “It is a lot you are asking of me too.... to hurt you....make you bleed purposely! I’m a doctor....not a sadist!!!”

Khan smirked: “You’ll do it so nicely. That is something you do when you are a doctor too. I admit it is with another purpose....not sexual pleasure but to heal...but this has a purpose too. To “heal” this sick organisation....and I’ll rather test my abilities here with you that find out that it doesn’t work together with Jim and Spock!”

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

“It will...it’ll have to...it’ll just have to!”  
___________________  
And it did. But Khan had to make a bit more persuasion before McCoy accepted it. Khan had asked how McCoy knew what his wife liked when they were having sex...and McCoy said that he could see it on her bodily reactions and her.....and here McCoy blushed a bit.....her moaning!

And Khan had pointed out that McCoy wouldn’t have to be ashamed or even fear that he had turned himself into a sadist, if he got sort of aroused by the things, he would do to Khan...on Khan’s request. First.... because Khan would emit enough pheromones to.... as he put it “turn a monastery consisting of monks over 80 years of age into a whorehouse”...and second.... because Khan would probably be able to force his own body to react positively....maybe even ejaculate.

“And I will defiantly moan” he had said.

Khan and McCoy had found different items around the flat that could be used to hurt Khan and Khan found quite a lot in the cupboard where McCoy had a collection of old and ancient medical instruments. As McCoy had shown Khan that cupboard, Khan had just looked at him.....and pointed at the collection of instruments he had chosen and said: “And you told me that doctors weren’t sadist?!”  
____________________________  
Khan was on his hands and knees on the floor beside the bed in McCoy’s rather big bedroom.  
McCoy was standing beside him and was whipping his buttocks and back severely with a make-shift whip made out of one of McCoy’s belts. Khan was moaning...and not just because of the whipping.

His nipples were pinched in a contraption normally used for holding a Padd secured on a stand....they were nasty looking devises with “teeth” and Khan had hissed as McCoy had put them on......and Khan’s balls and cock had been “secured” with leather bands so he was unable to come. Khan had hissed: “Harder....snugger...not that I want my balls to turn blue.....but it is supposed to prevent orgasm...so tighter, please, Leonard!”

And McCoy had to admit that it was an arousing sight with a naked Khan with those Padd-holders on his nipples. They were sitting so tight that his nipples were swollen and red and together with those leather bands around the base of Khan’s cock and balls....well it could be explained by the pheromones......but...McCoy had to admit that it was something he could get used to! Even more because Khan was very submissive......and gave McCoy another blow job. 

After that blow job Khan ended up beside the bed with a bloody back....and even if the skin was broken and he had welts and small open wounds...Khan continued to beg for more and as McCoy took a grip on the leather bands around Khan’s cock and balls and removed them in one swift motion...Khan shuddered and came as McCoy did let the whip fall heavily on Khan’s back two times more.

Afterwards Khan was ordered to lie down on the bed from corner to corner...back down. McCoy decided that the sheets could just as well be discarded afterwards as they would be rather bloody. Khan obediently had put his arms over his head and they were fastened to the right bedpost. Khan had hissed as he did it because the movement did hurt his wounded back....and then he was ordered not to move his legs as McCoy now bound Khan’s legs to the diagonal left bedpost. Khan had difficulties if he wanted to move now. He could get free though, if he used his strength....but he wanted to pretend not being so strong....and somehow this body wasn’t as strong as he remembered.

McCoy now had 3 syringe-needles in his hands. He had insisted on wearing nitril-gloves...Khan had told him that his body could fight any infection, but McCoy was doctor enough to insist.

McCoy now removed the Padd-holders and Khan hissed again as the blood returned to his abused nipples. McCoy began to touch them, to lick them and to pinch them and Khan moaned and bucked as much as he could for the restraints.....it didn’t matter that he had squirted semen on McCoy’s bed-room floor only 10 minutes ago....Khan was ready for another round!

McCoy looked at Khan who just gave a little nod...out of role...and McCoy stayed in his role as he said: “You are such a pain-slut.......and I’m going to pierce your nipples with this thick syringe-needle.....just to hear you beg for mercy.......and at the same time you are so perverted that you’ll like the pain! You are such a slut!!”

And then McCoy slowly pressed one of the syringe-needles through Khan’s left nipple.....Khan moaned even more and bucked......But McCoy could see that it was more out of pleasure since Khan’s erection didn’t deflate. McCoy licked off the blood....Oh my god.....this “training” of Khan turned him into a pervert! And then he pierced the second nipple.

“Please Leonard....I’m so close” panted Khan and McCoy took a firm grip on Khan’s cock, slid the last syringe-needle down through the urethra and out through the tissue on the underside of Khan’s cock....just beside the frenulum......giving Khan a “Prince Albert”-piercing. And the last pain made Khan come again.

Both Khan and McCoy had found it amusing that that sort of piercing still carried that name...even after more than 400 years....and the reason for the name was the same story or legend......The story was that Queen Victoria’s husband had such a piercing because his “member” could be teetered to the thigh and not “show off” too much in those tight Victorian trousers, men wore at that time. And that a lot of Victorian men used to have such a piercing too.  
____________________  
After the “scene” Khan looked in the mirror together with McCoy. Khan’s back and buttocks had already nearly healed. Only a few marks were to be seen because Khan was so pale....and he had wondered if his body would reject the jewellery put in the holes in his body. But Leonard’s alien black jewellery didn’t seem to bother his tissue and the two curled rings in Khan’s nipples and the curved rod in his cock looked rather nice. McCoy couldn’t even remember where those jewellery-pieces came from, but they had found them in his cupboard that contained ancient medical instruments too......and they were not finished with all of those yet!

McCoy shook his head: “You have turned me into a pervert, Khan. I like the sight of your body....I find it arousing when you are submissive and on your knees, I’m cheating on my wife with a gorgeous man and I even find that those piercings add even more beauty to your gorgeous body....and I almost came when you moaned as I pierced you!”

Khan smiled: “I’m very grateful that you actually have “bend yourself in two” and have been going against all your convictions because I’ve asked you......but I can assure you......it is just because of my pheromones!”

“No...not totally....I lied before. I was fascinated by your body when I put those bombs in you....and the activators. Even before that.....when you came into my med-bay....and chose to trust me. I am a little bit in love with you Khan. I can only admire your bravery.....your willingness to sacrifice yourself for the sake of your crew......and I so wish that it wouldn’t be necessary!”

Khan looked at him: “So do I......but I have to admit that those periods of me feeling “off”....they have increased.....We are running out of time....I’m running out of time......so.....we better continue. I want to be ready for tomorrow. Jim and Spock are going to be at the “Bones...Delicious Steaks & Marshmallows” tomorrow and I want to be there too! So time for the “medical equipment” from your cupboard...but don’t you dare telling me that those doctors back in time were not sadist!”  
_________________________________

They had chosen a variety of items.....some were rather nice.....and some were a bit...odd and strange: speculums, “jugums”....that were spiked cock-rings that should prevent erections, enema-devises, a Wartenberg wheel, clamps and forceps and “dilators” for different bodily openings:  
The vaginal speculum was used on Khan’s anus ....slowly opening him up for McCoy’s cock and Khan had moaned obscenely as McCoy very gently had turned the handle.....and the sight of the device up Khan’s arse had almost made McCoy come on the spot. But McCoy had managed to get a hold of himself and Khan had been ever so ready as McCoy had removed the speculum and replaced it with his own cock....only a few trusts and they both came.

After that they used the “rectal dilators”....which were basically butt-plugs made out of brass, but really old...more than 400 years old...and rather big. McCoy had always wondered what they had been used for...then, back in time...but Khan did suspect the use to be the same then as now.....pleasure! And told McCoy the story behind “massage wands for hysterical woman”....which were supposed to give women orgasms.....on doctor’s prescription! So why not nice medical equipment for men too?

The “Artificial Leech” from the end of the 18th century did cut tiny holes in Khan’s skin on his chest and arms while he was immobilised to the bed “spread eagle”....and with one of the rectal dilators...the biggest one...up his arse. And one of the other dilators....the sound.....one of the biggest down his urethra. Khan had bucked as McCoy graduately had dilated his urethra from the smallest sounds to the biggest, which was as thick as a finger. They had used the Wartenberg wheel all over Khan’s body, the enema-devises ( in the bathroom) and the spiked cock-rings too and Khan had been so totally lost in the sensations...the pain/pleasure confusion that it had taken him more than 5 minutes to return after his orgasms....at one occasion almost 8 minutes and McCoy had almost ejaculated by the sight of Khan enjoying the “torture” that much.

McCoy complained afterwards: “You have turned me into a gay sadist!!!”

Khan had just smirked and said: “Blame it on the pheromones!”

But McCoy knew that it wasn’t only them.....  
___________________  
Finally Khan and McCoy took a shower, ate a late meal and went to bed. Even Khan was a bit exhausted after more than 20 orgasms and McCoy found out to his own surprise that he actually had had more than 5.

“I’m not a horny teenager any more” he had said....and Khan had just yawned: “Pheromones!!”

_______________________  
Khan left the apartment the next day around midday. Dressed in obscenely tight black leather trousers, a tight fitting white T-shirt and a black well worn leather-jacket from McCoy’s youth. McCoy had wished him luck and promised that he would try to keep in touch.....there were a tracking device operated into Khan’s body too, but it could only show his condition and his position. They could not communicate directly. Devises for that was invented...but they were detectable....and thus too dangerous.  
They had hugged and Khan had left in a cab.


	9. The Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Warning: still BDSM....now not consensual. But Khan does it for a purpose...and he heals well and fast. ___

Khan entered the discrete door of the “Bones...Delicious Steaks & Marshmallows”-club..... and went up to the counter.

“I’m new in town....just arrived recently. My name is John Harrison and I wish to be a member!”

The receptionist looked at him...and found his appearance very nice....he smiled and said: “May I see your card, please?”

Khan smiled: “I’m not American. And where I’m from we do not have “cards”...so I do not have one. Is that a problem?”

“Yes...and no. You’ll have to fill a form...about your preferences and so on. I suppose you are a dom?”

Khan smiled again: “Why?”

“Because of the way you move.....almost like a cat......the way you smile....”

Khan smiled again: “Well....maybe I’m dominating in my everyday life....but sexually....I’m a masochist and a sub...well actually a “switch”......but I like pain.....and it is better and more fulfilling if I sub!”

And Khan turned around, took of his jacket and his T-shirt and showed his back. The back McCoy had whipped just before Khan had left and which had not had time enough to heal. Khan’s back showed a criss-cross of small wounds and welts and as he turned around the receptionist got a nice view of Khan’s stretched nipples. In the cupboard of McCoy’s they had found a box of more alien jewellery...same shapes but a bigger gauge...and it were those nipple-decorations that now stretched Khan’s nipples. The rod in his cock had been changed too and Khan could feel the stretch. He wouldn’t feel it more than a few hours before his body would have adjusted....but right now the slight pain aroused him. And it could be seen. His cock was semi-erect and very visible through the thin and soft black leather of his trousers...and that showed that he indeed did not wear any underwear!

“Oh...I see” gulped the receptionist and gave Khan a Padd.

“Fill in the forms...and I’ll prepare the member-card. Are you looking for someone just for one-time-pleasure....or a partner....maybe partners?” The receptionist really hoped for the latter for in that case he would be heavily rewarded. There were two guys who would pay a fortune for a good....no.... gorgeous looking masochist....so he thought to himself: “please...please.....be gay....and be a pain-slut!”  
________________________  
Khan had filled in the form and returned it to the receptionist. Khan had of course researched and knew exactly what Jim and Spock were looking for in their....not partner.....but something akin to a slave. And Khan knew enough.....helped by McCoy and the other members of the Conspiracy....about Spock’s and Jim’s tendency to indeed not stick to the words in the contract that were made between them and their “partner” or “partners”. Up till now there had been quite a few incidents of breach of contracts, because they would have overstepped the limitations of such contracts: using blindfolds or restraints even if the contract had said that it would be off limit. They had never paid any compensation though....the Star Fleet Confederation had too good solicitors to make this necessary. Khan had of course not chosen everything on Jim’s and Spock’s “menu” of things they wanted to do to their slave....it would have been too obvious, but he had ticked off enough of the small boxes like “do you like to be whipped” “how severe: light, medium or heavy” to make himself interesting.

Khan knew very well that he was walking into the Lion’s den......but he just hoped that they would not have restrained him too badly...or gagged him....when the opportunity for igniting the bombs would show up....and even then he would be able to ignite them.  
If the worst thing would happen and they would have killed him, the bombs could ignite because the circuits in the bombs would register his descending body temperature. But he would like to be alive to be able to chose the right time and place.  
____________________________  
Khan was told to sit and wait in the waiting room as the receptionist with wobbling fingers checked his answers. That young gorgeous man almost fitted like five fingers in a glove to the demands of those two rich and perverted young protégées of the leader Barnett of the Star Fleet Confederation. The receptionist was going to be rich!!!  
____________________  
Khan had only waited about half an hour before Jim and Spock entered the door and Khan was told to meet them in one of the other rooms on the 2nd floor.  
As he entered the door they were waiting for him.....and there had been arranged a nice meal on a table too.

“Sprinkle the cake with sugar before it turns out to be poisoned” Khan thought to himself. Oh yes...they were going to be oh so nice...until the contract was signed.

Khan carefully pushed forward the persona he had created in his mind: the a bit naive, servile captain that had only been partly augmented, was not as strong as the other augments and who was so proud of having worked under the mighty Khan Noonien Singh. The John Harrison who was a masochist.....were made to be that to please his ruler and now he missed the firm hand and the pain and the submission.

He gave a mental excuse to his former self. He would never have had such a man for his pleasure. He had been married, loved his wife, who had been human and would never have considered using another human being in such a way for his own pleasure!

Sarek, Spock’s father and who was a part of the Conspiracy, and who could understand the logical reasons for the “removal” of his son, had told Khan....not face to face but through a safe channel of communication,...that Spock, being a hybrid, wasn’t able to perform a true mind-meld. He would be able to feel feelings and sense thoughts, but a true mind-meld...no.....he was too inexperienced and to proud to learn. So Khan would be safe as long as he would be able to create a plausible persona...preferably in more than one layer and Khan had assured Sarek that he easily could do that.  
___________________  
In the room at the 2nd floor of the club they talked and Jim and Spock told what they wanted......and lied up hill and down dale about it. 

And Khan told about his past....the false one: “I come from a country with mountains (and that wasn’t a lie)...and I grew up in a small mountain village. I can remember my mother and my brothers and sisters. One day some men came...and they wanted to take me with them. I hadn’t turned 4 yet. My mother told me that I had to go....or else the village would pay (and that wasn’t a lie either). When I came to the Facility they did something to me...I can’t remember everything, but I was altered. There were others that could fight better, heal better (that was a lie) but I was one of the best to make inventions and I was chosen to be a technician and educated to be one. I was educated to perform other tasks...” And Khan carefully pushed forward a picture of him kneeling in front of one of the scientists, who was fucking Khan’s face (it had happened when Khan was 8 years old and the man who had abused Khan so many times was the first one to be killed when they conquered the Facility). Khan had noticed that Spock was touching him and could feel Khan’s emotions and sometimes “see” mental images in a flash.

Khan continued: “When I was 12 years old I was sent to another country (and that was true...it had been the augmented children’s first combat) and there I met Khan Noonien Singh. He was their leader even if he was just a boy...only 2 years older than me. I was educated even more...in more than one area...and then the augments left the facility to fight against our enemies. Not all returned after the battles....and the scientists stopped making more augments. The whole world became more and more political unstable and the augments started fighting each other. Even if the Facility was at a remote place, we all heard about it......and then came the Eugenic Wars. The scientists of our Facility were ordered to kill us all, but a part of us only slightly altered boys and girls managed to escape and the last thing we saw as we disappeared up in the mountains was that the Facility was blown to pieces.”

Spock looked at Khan. He had secretly touched the young man and found no reason....because he wasn’t very skilled....not to believe him. “You are not augmented then?” he asked.

“I do not know” lied Khan. “They gave me some injections.....I think I heal a bit faster than humans normally would do, but not faster than some of Khan’s human followers would do. And I’m most certainly not as strong as the augments were....and not at all trained for combat. I was.....hm.....trained to give sexual pleasure...and Khan Noonien Singh honoured me by choosing me to be his servant when he seized power over one third of Earth’s population. He and his men found us in a small mountain village where we had hidden during the Eugenic Wars....all 14 of us. And that is why I’m here now. That is the only talent I can use in this century. My knowledge of technology is 300 years old......and I can’t stay in Scotty’s apartment for ever. I was given a little help by him as I left the space harbour.....And I miss the discipline and the submission. It calms my mind....and give me sexual pleasure....so why not?”

Khan smiled at Jim and Spock...all too well knowing that it was those two who had ordered the Social Welfare not to help Khan too much....or rather it was an order from Barnett. They didn’t want Khan to be too independent.

Jim lied: “Yeah it is such a shame that you sort of fell between two stools here. You are not alien...and therefore you can’t get the help from the alien department......and you can’t be a “human”....a Tellurian....because you haven’t been registered by your birth...so.....”

“That is why this arrangement would be ideal” said Spock, “but may we....sort of....see the “merchandise” before we buy?”

Khan looked at them: “You want to see me naked...and have sex with me?”

He took of his T-shirt and Khan could hear that his whipped back....that had healed more by now....and pierced nipples did affect both Spock and Jim. It aroused them.....and even more when Khan did not remove his trousers right away but just smoothed the soft leather over his semi-erect cock and that showed the outline of his piercing there too, before he removed his leather trousers totally.

He was asked if he would mind more piercings and having those he already had stretched.....and Khan of course knew about Jim’s and Spock’s interest in those topics....and he told them that he wouldn’t mind....but not too much and not into obscene sizes! And then he was asked who had whipped him and pierced him and he told the lie that would protect McCoy: that Scotty had refused to help when John had grown more desperate because of his “needs” for submission and pain and had known that McCoy had such interests (it was a downright lie but would protect McCoy if Jim or Spock or others from the Star Fleet Confederation would learn about Khan’s stay at McCoy’s apartment).

Both Jim and Spock were delighted to find out that McCoy wasn’t that nice straight doctor they had considered him to be and they admired the nice piercing-job he had done and the nice pattern of whiplashes, he had made on Khan.

“John” had bowed his head and said: “He couldn’t afford to keep me. He would have liked it though!”  
________________________  
Khan was ordered to turn around....and he could see that his body and willingness to obey orders did affect those two other men....and that even without emitting pheromones.  
He was ordered down on all 4.....and Spock began to fuck him with his fingers....telling Khan that he actually being a Vulcan had so sensitive fingers that he himself would be able to come just by fucking Khan. Spock had a firm grip around Khan’s cock as he vigorously pumped his fingers in and out of Khan’s arse....and Jim was just watching. At a time Spock had all 4 fingers of his rather big hand up Khan’s arse and told Jim to join in as he replaced his fingers with his a bit alien looking cock.....and Khan moaned. He didn’t have to pretend anything there.....the sensations filled his body and he almost floated....  
__________________________________________  
He had actually enjoyed the sex with those two men. It could be worse than having Spock’s rather big member....double ridged and with a green tone.....up his arse and he didn’t mind so much to have Jim’s cock down his throat. According to his “memories” from the other place this was nothing compared to the sexual assaults he had experienced in the evil Marcus and his men’s hands.

The contract was signed and Khan accompanied Spock and Jim to their apartment.   
________________________________  
Over the next 14 days Jim and Spock almost violated every point in the contract. Khan was treated like a slave......gagged, blindfolded and tethered by a leash to the kitchen-floor. He was naked except for a black leather-collar around his neck and a cage around his cock and balls preventing him from enjoying the things Jim and Spock did to him. His back was covered in welts, bruises and half-healed wounds. He and McCoy had discussed how he would be able to hide that he healed in an augmented way, but Khan had decided that he wouldn’t hide that fact about him. He told his false back ground story: “Khan”....his dom from the ancient time had apparently ordered the doctors then to alter him....so he would heal fast so “Khan” could whip him, flog him, “punish” him whenever he wanted.

Already the first day in the apartment Spock had ordered him to undress and had thrown Khan’s clothes away and burned his duffle-bag and its contents: “You belong to us now.” had he said, “The contract had been altered...and there is nothing you can do about it. There is nothing you want to do about it! Because we know exactly why you are here....why you wanted this to happen!”

And Jim had continued: “You might be a masochist......but you are not totally a sub.....and we are going to make you the perfect sub......a fuck-toy.....a slave. Because we have your crew...”

And Khan thought: “Here we go again! Different universe......same threat!” But he just bowed his head in submission.

Spock had grappled his hair and lifted Khan’s head and had put his fingers on the mind-meld points at Khan’s face. Spock wasn’t very good at it and his invasion into Khan’s mind did hurt like hell: “If you do as you are told....we might let you see your crew......frozen.....and if you are really, really nice we might thaw a few others and use them as sex-toys too!”

“They are rather nice looking, most of them.....and with the rest still frozen and at our mercy, they better obey just as nicely as you do!!!” had Jim continued.

Spock only “saw” and felt the despair and desperation that “John Harrison” felt....and the resignation.  
________________________  
At one occasion Jim and Spock had gone too far...even for Khan’s augmented abilities. They had decided to “play” with Khan’s pierced areas and things went wrong at the end of a very long session, where he had almost suffocated because of a too tight collar around his neck....and since Khan had been gagged, he couldn’t protest. They seldom listened to his safe word anyway. At the end, with black spots in his vision, Khan couldn’t keep himself conscious any more. He hadn’t had oxygen enough for over 1 hour and as he was kneeling on the bed, spreader bars between his legs, arm bound behind his back and the only thing that kept him upright t was chains through the holes in his abused nipples, he collapsed. Ripping the tissue of his nipples apart. 

That was the only occasion where he saw a glimpse of worry in Jim’s eyes. Spock’s almost black eyes were as cold as ever.

“He will heal!” was his only comment. But Jim made sure that the torn tissue was put into place, that the wounds were bandaged and Khan was allowed to lie in a bed and had something proper to eat.  
____________________________  
Khan found it increasingly difficult to “stay” in this reality. Only when Jim and Spock....well actually “tortured” him, he was present. Left alone he drifted away.....was in a cold and dark place and he found it increasingly difficult to remember how he got from one place to another.....Time was running out.

At the end of the 2nd week in Jim’s and Spock’s hands an opportunity showed itself. There was going to be a party at the top of one of the most expensive buildings in San Francisco...in the huge penthouse apartment belonging to Supreme Admiral Barnett and present would be the top of the top...all 25 leading members and their protégées.

Khan had even found out that Captain Pike, Chekov, Scotty and McCoy were supposed to “disappear” on the next trip with the Enterprise. Not because the heads of the Star Fleet Confederation had any suspicion about the Conspiracy, but because Jim wanted to be the Captain of the ship and because Scotty, Chekov and McCoy would know too much when Pike disappeared. 

Jim and Spock had talked about saving McCoy’s life because “Now we have something on him”....but they decided that that “something” wasn’t enough to keep him “on a short leash”......and he should die too.

Now time was definitely running out!


	10. A party

Khan found himself tethered to a wall. Two bowls were in front of him...one with food and one with water.....as if he was a dog. He looked down his own body...there were dull aches a lot of places and a few sharp pains. Mostly from his nipples. They had been stretched and a chain was put through the holes....and every time he moved a bit, the chain would tug at the open wounds there. Did Jim and Spock never get tired of their obsession with his nipples?!

He was wearing a thick leather collar and it was tethered to a hook in the wall. He was naked apart from wearing a harness. This time his cock was not in a cage but his testicles were forced downwards by a leather strap and that alone would prevent him from coming. Around the base of his cock was a spiked ring if the leather strap wouldn’t be enough. He could feel that he had a plug up his arse too.....and he supposed it was the one with the remote control. Right now it wasn’t vibrating. A sound was in his cock....stretching the urethra and a ring was attached to the sound and round the head of his cock and another rod was put through his prince Albert piercing....stretching that too.....the stretch made a dull pain. 

He knew where he was and what was supposed to happen to him...according to Jim’s and Sock’s plans, but he couldn’t remember them putting the harness on him or how he had gotten here.....And “here” was the insanely expensive pent-house-apartment belonging to Supreme Admiral Barnett on top of one of the tallest buildings in San Francisco. Khan would not feel so guilty about blowing it to pieces......there were just offices in the building below this apartment. And they would be empty by now. Those incidents where he couldn’t remember things came more and more frequent now....why? When he wasn’t present here ....he was....where? Somewhere cold and dark.....and not totally noiseless.....but where was that? Was it a brain damage that made those strange hallucinations? 

He looked around.....Concentrate!!! Oh my. Those people who had build the building had been rather too confident.....no stairs...just 4 elevators. If they failed, people would be trapped in the building. Maybe they thought it to be safe enough knowing that there would be 2 helicopters on the roof....but when they were gone, people would be trapped without functioning elevators. Stupid!

Khan looked around carefully. Head down....just looking through the fringe of his hair. The picture of total submission. He had pretended so nicely to be broken.....to have no will of his own any more. And both Jim and Spock had bought it. Spock so sure that his imperfect abilities to perform mind-melds would have shown any deception from Khan’s side......Thank God for arrogant and inept Vulcan hybrids!

He could see the “table” Jim and Spock had prepared for him...a horizontal X.... so he could be put on display for the “audience”. Jim and Spock had told him in detail....maybe to enjoy the fear in his eyes....what they were going to do to him. All the “tools” had been laid out: the Wartenberg wheels, the knives....oh yes they intended to cut him....the even bigger sounds, the but plugs, the whips and the candles.....and they had shown him how sections of that X could be moved around and give people access to his arse. Everybody who wanted it would be allowed to fuck him.....and he wouldn’t be allowed to come himself. Oh they really enjoyed that he had to be so obedient!

One of the servants came over to his place near the elevators. He had a bottle of water in his hand. Kahn had already been ordered to drink all the water in the bowl...and now they expected him to drink more. If he urinated, he would be punished even more....They wanted him to feel the extreme discomfort by having an overfilled bladder. Such idiots.....at a certain point it would be so overfilled that he would not be able to empty it any more......and people had died because of a burst bladder. Maybe they wanted him to die tonight?

The servant whispered: “You are not the first tethered to that wall. Look down. There is a hole in the crack between wall and floor. It’s a hose. You’ll have to yank it into your cock, but you’ll be able to pee!”

And then he turned away after having filled his water bowl again. Khan managed to get the hose down his cock beside the sound. He was bleeding because of that but he couldn’t care less. After that he obediently drank the water in the bowl. It would be no problem now.

He wished that he somehow could know if it was now...if the Conspiracy had saved his crew....or if he should try to ignite the bombs later. Not everyone was present yet. A few of the very top apparently wouldn’t attend the party tonight. If he only could know somehow....

The same servant came over to him again, now pretending to wheel a trolley into the elevator. He looked at the poor man who was tethered to the wall and who apparently was waiting to be the main show tonight....being tortured.

“I have a message. Delivered through the kitchen. I should say: "Greetings from the sadistic doctor. Concerning tools and crops for the farm....”

Kahn lifted his head and looked intensely at the servant, who almost took a step backward and stuttered: “You are not a slave at all!”

“I’m not....and the rest of the message?”

“I was told to say: “They are safe. We have them. We are heading towards Sarek’s world. Proceed!” Do you understand that? It was rather strange!”

Khan smiled: “Thank you. Are there other non-arseholes here?”

The servant smiled back: “Yes....about 4 of us”

Khan nodded towards the elevators: “Find a plausible excuse......and get the hell out of here. You have about 5 minutes!”

As the servant turned around Khan could hear him murmur: “Finally...that was about time someone got to those arseholes!”

Khan looked carefully at the persons attending the party. They were eating the main course now. No one was looking at him and he noticed that the last remaining 4 people had turned up. Maybe they had just been in another room?

Slowly he spread his legs wide....almost in a “split”......each leg as far out as possible. It did tug at his scrotum because of the leather strap around his testicles.....but finally he felt the activator being activated. He could feel the heat that told him that the first step had been activated. He carefully moved his legs back again. He was bleeding a bit, but in a few minutes it wouldn’t matter any more. Khan now forced his arms behind his back, palm against palm and slowly forced the hands up between his shoulder blades....there! The tiny pinpricks of heat told him that the bombs had gone up a step....from “green” to “orange”.....Now it was time for his final move.

He got up on his legs...moved his hands to the thick black leather-collar around his neck and pulled it apart as easily as a human would pull one made of liquorice apart.

The strange feeling in his body had gone worse since he sent the servant away....a buzzing almost. It wasn’t time for his body to fail now!!

He moved fast.....was standing between the guests now. Caught the eyes of Jim, Spock and Barnett in turn....smiled almost wolf like...all teeth. And had the pleasure of seeing real fear in Spock’s expression.

“God bye, arseholes!” Khan said before he touched his throat and said the last activating word: “Pumpkin!”

He felt the heat from the bombs increasing.......

And everything disappeared.......  
__________________  
At the screen that showed San Francisco at the bridge of the STS Farragut.....a significant smaller star ship than the STS Enterprise........ Scotty, Chekov and McCoy saw the huge explosion....  
“He was the bravest man, I’ve ever met” said Scotty.

McCoy nodded: “And there were no limits of what he would do to save his crew!”

Captain Pike nodded and ordered: “Engage the warp as soon as we are 800 km’s away from Earth. Destination: Vulcan!”

“Aye...aye, sir!" was helmsman Chekov’s answer.


	11. The real reality?

The light....it was much too bright! Khan felt as if daggers were pushed into his eyes and the pain in the rest of his body was unbearable. Not now again!!!!Again he was in a malfunctioning cryo-tube. The lid had opened itself and he was soaking wet because of the thawing. There was a sound ....a terribly annoying sound and lights were blinking.

He slumped down on the floor. He had a terrible nausea, his vision was blurred and he had a gut-sinking feeling of “déjà-vu”. Not again....he couldn’t do it once more!  
This time it had to be, it felt totally like......the “real” reality. Despite his condition: the pain, the nausea and the blurred vision, everything felt clearer and the sounds and the smells were more real. Had all his recent memories, memories for the last month and a half, just been a dream?

Again he managed to crawl away from the cryo-tube and slumped against the wall. This time it had the right colour and the right texture. He smelt the right way beneath the sweat and the blood, and the sounds sounded the “right” way. It felt like...and it sounded like....and smelt like the SS Enterprise. And that was really a bad thing. It indicated that this was “Evil-Marcus-reality”....and that he was the last one remaining of his people.

It had to be the “real” reality....because his memories were perfect. Too perfect! Before...the other place....A real other alternate universe?...Or just a very vivid dream? There were moments where he couldn’t recall how he had gone from one place to another and having an eidetic memory he should be able to recall every little detail. And he was not able to do that. This reality though, despite his condition he could recall everything! Most of all the terrible grief and gut sinking feeling of hopelessness as the torpedoes with his crew were blown to pieces....and the red hot rage as he tried to steer the wrecked “Vengeance” against the Starfleet Headquarters. Why had he even tried? Why had he run like a hare, as he to his own surprise had survived the crash? And why had he not allowed Spock to finish him?

There had been distant sounds outside his room and now they came closer. The door opened with the “right” swoosh this time, and in entered...the very man who had been in Khan’s thoughts. Again Khan coughed and spat the upcoming blood out on the floor and Khan thought: “What the hell....maybe this time my line would be well received?”

And he said what he had said in his dream(?): “Are you here to finish your job, Mr. Spock?”

Again a blurred figure dressed in a blue uniform tunic....with black hair and almost black eyes... knelt in front of him: “I can assure you, Mr. Khan, that I have no intention of killing you!”

“No, I suppose not...that would be too merciful....” mumbled Khan and coughed again.

 

Spock looked in shock as he saw Khan’s eyes roll back in his head, Khan's mouth suddenly was filled with blood and Khan started to cramp.

Spock scooped the augment up in his arms and ran towards the med-bay. Thank God it was only down the corridor and it would be quicker just to run down there.

  
As Spock entered the med-bay with the hopefully just unconscious Khan in his arms, he was already yelling: “Bones...it was Khan’s cryotube....malfunctioning. He is bleeding and unconscious, but still alive ...I hope!”

Bones looked up....in a bit of a shock. It was Spock! Yelling! The very man, who had looked in the eyes of The Grim Reaper and almost not blinked at several occasions, was now visibly shaken!

Khan was hurried to one of the bio-beds. One of the new and enhanced from the “Vengeance”–design and thank God Bones could soon establish, that the augment was already in a better condition and in the process of healing as the bio-bed examined the body and gave the readings on a display.

Spock left...he was very much needed some other places. There had been a minor, but none the less dangerous hit by a meteor at the Enterprise’s hull and it was because of that, the alarms from Khan’s malfunctioning cryo-tube had been unnoticed for a while until Spock had reacted.

Should Bones sedate the augment? Would Khan be trashing around when he came to his senses again? Bones took the tricorder again and tried to scan Khan’s body as a hand moved quickly as a snake and griped Bones at his throat, not too forcefully, and a pair of piercing blue/green/golden eyes looked into his.

Bones didn’t move, just looked at Khan, very calmly... and managed to rasp: “It would be very unwise to kill the very man who is caring for your well-being!”

Khan took his hand away and sat up on the rim of the bio-bed and said: “Oh...I’m very sorry. I did confuse you with the doctor, who took a lot of my blood away from me while I was sedated and later was the one who sedated me with that blasted Andorrian poison, that totally paralysed my body, except from the ability to breathe, but kept my mind fully awake!!!”

At least Bones had the decency to blush and he stammered: “I...I....didn’t know. Believe me Khan, I found what I thought to be the best sedation. I didn’t want to put you severely wounded back in that cryo-tube, knowing that you wouldn’t heal while frozen!”

Khan just looked at Bones and saw the sincerity in the expression on his face....yes, Bones was shocked by the revelation of the nature of the Andorrian sedation.  
Khan sighed: “How did you find the receipt?....Since you apparently are not a part of that “Section 31” that tortured me and mine!”

Bones took a step closer to Khan, both to show that he wasn’t afraid of the man and to show his sympathy: “On the net....and I most certainly am not a part of that blasted section....and believe me Khan, a lot of the things that those scientist did to you and yours....it hadn’t gone unnoticed! That is why people’s opinion of you and the other augments has changed....that is why we are on our way to “New Vulcan.”

Khan just looked at Bones who was standing in front of him: “What would the purpose be of bringing me to “New Vulcan”?!?”

Bones looked at him a bit confused and then he realised: “Oh my God.....they never told you? No one has told you!”

“Told me what?”

“That your crew is safe!”

Khan looked at Bones with an abyss of sadness in his eyes: “Yes, they are safe...being dead. The safest place to be, ever. Even you as a human with limited eidetic abilities must be able to remember that they blew up together with the torpedoes that Spock had ordered armed before they were sent to the Vengeance. I always fail there...I am never cruel enough to kill everybody. If I had aimed at your life-support....and it had only acquired one precise hit, I can assure you, I could have got to my crew....and you would all have been dead! I always fail in that department.....did then and did now!”

  
And Khan looked away.

Bones dared to touch Khan’s hand: “Khan, Spock was scared of you. Of what you could do...and did. He wanted to kill you, yes. Back then...not now....with the knowledge we have now. But he never killed your crew. You only got the armed torpedoes, but your people were safe, here in the med-bay. In their cryo-tubes. Every single one of them. All 72!”

Khan was just sitting there and then he moved fast.....away from the med-bed and knelt in front of Bones. The deep kneeling...with his backside on the heels. His head was bowed and his hands limp at his sides. The picture of total surrender. He spoke in a very low voice: “In that case, Dr. Bones, if you can guarantee their safety, I volunteer. You can do to me whatever you want! The scientists can do to me whatever they want. I’ll cooperate!”

Khan looked up at Bones who momentarily was paralysed and Khan continued: “But please. Do not hurt more of my people. Do not experiment on more......and if you all are too afraid of what we are able to do, then please allow me to kill everyone myself.....”

Bones looked at Khan for a few seconds and then he said: “Don’t kneel in front of me, Khan. Please....get up on your feet and don’t humble yourself like that. Oh my God....what kind of monsters do you think we humans are?” And Bones wondered where the arrogant and disdainful “Khan” had gone...this was just a desperate man.

And Khan rose again and sat down on the bio-bed. He was going to answer, when Bones interrupted him: “No, Khan....let me answer that question myself! You think we are monsters.....and no wonder. What humans have done to you augments in the past, when you were growing up, when you were soldiers. How you were treated by Marcus and his scientists....how Marcus had ordered your people to be killed, and finally how I....we....on board the Enterprise treated you, back-stabbed you....and even had the nerve to call you a monster and leave both you and your people in the mercy of 300 year old technology. It had exactly shown that we indeed are monsters! We are going correct just a bit of that right now and in the future to come....”

And Bones continued:  
“Let’s sit down at this table.....and I’ll make the replicator make something to eat? To drink?”

“Tea, please”

After the replicator had made two mugs of “tea”...or something close to it, Bones continued: “I really...really hope that we have done the right thing as the cryo-tubes started to fail!”

Khan lifted his head in one instant and his eyes were filled with worry as he asked: “What have you done.....and how many have failed? You said that my crew was safe?!”

Bones answered: “When Jim nearly died....”

And Khan interrupted him: “What?!? What happened? I didn’t hit him that hard, did I?”

“Take it easy, you do not have much part in his death......or “near-death”. We all presumed then that it was your doing. But later we learned that you had only part in a fraction of the circumstances. More about that later. I want to tell you about the precautions we have made regarding your crew...”

And Bones continued: “When Jim nearly died....came so close that we thought he was indeed dead, we removed one of the augments from one of the cryo-tubes.”

Khan now looked even more worried: “What did you do to him?!”

It could be seen that Khan really made an effort not to shake the answer out of Bones.

“I...we.... were desperate to save Jim. But we didn’t want to harm your crew-member. It was easy enough to get the augment out of the tube and I hoped that the advanced technology only was necessary in the freezing- and the thawing-process. You had survived being thawed and knowing what Marcus had been ready to do to us and your words: “He used my friends to control me” made me believe that he hadn’t been gentle thawing you....and you still survived. You had mentioned that your people didn’t need any oxygen while frozen....so we treated your crew-member in a very undignified way and wrapped him in plastic and put him in the freezing compartment together with our frozen food. Later as Jim was in a hospital-bed and as we put your crew-member back in his tube and as the light-pattern and the whole device seemed to function again, I hoped we had done the right thing!”

Khan just looked at Bones and said: “It sounds reasonable....Yes the advanced technology is only necessary in the freezing and the thawing process...I hope. When we fled from Earth 300 years ago we didn’t have much time to test. I suppose you have stacked my crew-members from the failing cryo-tubes amongst frozen sirloin and ham by now?”

Bones laughed a bit: “We have contained them....but with a bit more dignity. Not between frozen food but in their own freezers. But we haven’t dared to thaw them. You said you were better at “everything” and we were afraid that that included surviving being thawed the wrong way. There was evidence in the files from the “Archive”...”Section 31” that more than 5 augments died being thawed. So we didn’t dare doing that. I hope we made the right decision.”

Khan looked down on his hands: “I suppose you have done your best under the given circumstances. I appreciate that..But why are we on the way to New Vulcan?”

“It had been arranged that your crew will be thawed and be put in a facility first and.....”

“I see...” and Khan just looked at his hands around his tea mug.

And Bones suddenly understood how it might sound to Khan: “Oh my God....not such a “facility”! Just a medical one. To make sure that there are no side-effects of being thawed....and then they would be evaluated. To see if they can function between others. You...I suppose....had to adjust to the fact that the Galaxy was inhabited by millions of different species and that we humans are just one out of many....”

“Yeah...Marcus didn’t give me much time to adjust to that...” Khan shuddered a bit and looked at Bones, who continued: “Yeah....I could believe that. When your people have adjusted, they would be very much needed on New Vulcan. There are not many Vulcans left and every hand would be needed...”

“Oh” said Kahn: “I understand....they are strong and durable....so they are to become slaves?!”

“For God’s sake, Khan, no! Your people would be given full citizen rights. They would be given houses and possibilities for education. They would be given any help needed. But it is true that New Vulcan demand strong people.....the Vulcans themselves are strong and...what did you call it? “Durable”. But even humans are living there too, now. New Vulcan....or actually to be more precise Sarek and Spock Prime, figured that augments would be more welcome on New Vulcan, it being a pioneer-planet by now with a lot of races mingled, that augments would be on Earth. The Eugenic War would only be an issue for humans and not for “New Vulcans.”

Now Khan smiled and looked at Bones and said: “Thank you! But I noticed that you said “Your people” and not “you”....I suppose it indicates that I’m not included.”

”You are right...”

And Khan interrupted: “A trial then, before I’m executed?”

“Oh God no, Khan. Do you expect that?! Just a hearing....to find out if there is going to be a trial at all!”

“I see. Well “cross that bridge when you reach it”!”He looked up at Bones: “You never told me what happened to the captain?”

And Bones told what had happened: That Kirk had sacrificed his own life to save the ship and the crew as they plunged towards Earth without any motor-power....not from the normal motors and not from the warp-cell. Their only chance for survival was to make the warp-core function again and Marcus’ fire against the Enterprise and later Khan’s shooting had finally moved the warp-core out of line.

Bones told: “Jim crawled into the warp-core chamber and tried to align the warp-core. The protection-suits were destroyed and it was one chance out of a million that it could come into place before he would be too weak and before we would plunge to the surface of Earth and kill ourselves and hundreds of thousands of people down under us. We were already under the highest clouds in the atmosphere as he despite all odds managed to kick it into place. We couldn’t use the usual motors good enough. They had been hit...both by Marcus and by you and didn’t have enough power to drag us out of the gravity pull from the Earth. Jim saved us all....and the people under us on the surface......but the radiation that penetrated his body as the core came into place, almost killed him. He managed to crawl back to the airlock and close of the door so the machine-compartment wouldn’t be contaminated...and there Spock found him...dying from the radiation and Spock couldn’t touch him or reach him because the radiation-level had to be lowered before we could move Jim.”

Bones told about Spock’s grief and break-down and his chase after the man he held responsible for his friend’s death and how Bones had got that mad idea to inject a part of Khan’s blood sample into a dead tribble, just to find out that the tribble was alive again. That Bones had grasped at a straw and frozen the apparently dead Kirk and spoken about getting his hands of some more of Khan’s blood.

Bones continued his story: “When Jim finally was in the med-bay there were no life-signs anymore. That was when I discovered the tribble. I had injected it with the rest of your blood sample....I really do not know why....and it was breathing again! I moved the crew-member of yours...just to give Jim a chance and told Uhura that she should try to get both you and Spock beamed back to us. On the bridge they had followed the Vengeance and saw you jump away from the wreck...no one had expected you to survive...”

Khan interrupted him: “Neither did I... and I do not know why I ran......maybe I should just have stayed and waited for someone to come and find me and kill me....I had nothing left......not even a wish to stay alive!”

Bones looked at him: “Well, Spock tried to kill you....and if it is a comfort to you he had felt extremely guilty about trying...especially when he found out that you were only to blame for the partly destruction of our motors....and even there Marcus had done the most damage. That is why both Spock and Spock Prime and Sarek have worked so hard to get you to New Vulcan! Well back to Jim. When they brought you in I’m afraid that I did something very unethical: I took your blood without your consent and injected it into Jim and.......”

Khan looked at him in shock: “You took my blood and just....injected it!?!....”

Bones blushed a bit and said: “I....I thought that if it worked on that Tribble it would work on him too....hopefully....I was desperate!”

Khan grabbed his hand: “How long time has passed since he got my blood....and how much did you give him?!”

“3 years...and all in all 6 litres during a week or so while you healed. I didn’t dare take more knowing that you had to heal...and I had to get rid of the sedation.....separate it from your blood before I used it on Jim.. What is wrong?!”

Now Khan looked even more worried: “How much was raw blood?”

“Only the first 3 litres....then I synthesized a serum...is something wrong?”

Khan looked worried: “He is on board, right? And he hasn’t complained about pains or headaches?”

“Khan...Jim was born in a shuttle....evacuated from a Star ship. A shuttle doesn’t protect so much from the radiation from space as a star ship does....so he has a lot of health issues...allergies and so on because of mutations I guess. And then all the weird stuff he had to eat on Tarsus IV to survive.....all sorts of foreign amino-acids from the local fauna and flora.....Nearly all the crops from Earth died because of a fungus and Kodos, the governor, decided to kill half the population to help the rest to survive. Jim was one of nine kids that managed to hide and survive until the star ship from the Federation finally turned up...much too late. He was malnourished...and dirty.... and only 13 years old had he managed to not only keep himself but 8 other younger children alive, but only because as he later put it: “We were like the old apes from Earth they had told us about in school: the Ramapithecus hat only survived because they had the approach towards food and drink: “If it is liquid....drink it. If it is solid........eat it.” So our good Jim has a lot of health issues and only does tell me about half of them!”

Khan just shook his head: “You’ll have to call him to med-bay soon, very soon....as in within the next hour or so.......and I need some lab-equipment. That he was born in an unshielded space shuttle has maybe saved his life, Bones. My blood is not supposed to resurrect humans. My blood might do more harm than it actually helps...”

“But the Harwood girl?!”

“Was a child.....and she only got the altered blood...not the raw one. Oh my God, Bones....if you just could give my blood or my fellow augments' blood to anyone dead or dying.....what a strange world it would be. Death would be curable!”

Bones smiled: “Quite a nightmare actually!”

Khan smiled back: “We are even not immortal....we live longer than the average human. But immortal soldiers, that would be a nightmare too. We can be killed...but not easily...The reason why we can repair ourselves is caused by two things: platelets in our blood and ....nano-robots. Not alone am I an augment...actually made a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. Not with the hems of being stitched together on the outside, but my gene material is a patchwork of genes from only God knows wherefrom, but I’m actually a cyborg too. Mostly in my bone-marrow in my pelvis, in my femur and my humerus are little “factories” which make those nano-robots. And how the scientists invented those back in the 1970ties....that’ll remain a mystery. I’ll show you how it works if you have a real good microscope.”

And Khan showed how his nano-robots taken away from his blood would form little round spheres that finally could be seen with the naked eye: the size of a “period” in a text.  
He explained: “We all....every augment...had those implanted. Some of us as babies, but as I first came to “The Facility” in Northern India as a 3 year old boy, I first had them injected at that age. Of course my genes gave me an excellent immune system and I’ve got an idea where from it was taken, but it is the nano-robots that rise it to this incredibly high level....and make it possible for me to heal that fast. Even re-grow lost limbs. As long there is still bones with bone-marrow left in my body, I will be.... given time enough.....able to grow a new arm, leg, half of my body, new organs.”

Khan made a pause and continued in a very low voice: “Marcus’ scientist were so nice to show me exactly how much pain I could tolerate and how much I was able to re-grow....Fortunately...or “unfortunately”....it depends of the point of view....when they found the limitations of how much they could molest an augmented body before it died...it wasn’t on my body!”

He looked again at Bones who only sat there in a stunned silence: “At that time I honestly thought that we 6 poor “lab-rats”....heavy sedated, but able to breathe on our own and not being granted the mercy of being unconscious.....were the last one remaining. Just like in that old song “Ten green bottles”.... all 5 of them..... “accidently fell” and I was the last one remaining. I swore there, shackled to a lab-table...that I would try to escape and have my revenge!”

“Oh my God...” was everything Bones managed to say: “And I understand now that it was the same sedation I used on you! You must have expected any moment that I would start experimenting on you!”

Khan just looked at him: “I did! At first. But you only took blood away from me and gave me nutrition, made sure that I was in a bio-bed and not on a hard lab-table made of steel and made sure I was moved around so I wouldn’t get pressure sores. I wouldn’t have anyway...but you couldn’t know. I was confused. Spock had tried to kill me and nearly succeeded because I was already severely wounded....and here were a doctor who had every reason to hate me and want me dead and who had sedated me...and you just made sure that I healed and was in a bio-bed. What was your purpose?! I couldn’t figure it out! And then....you did put me back in my old cryo-tube and it was allright....it would only be a question of time before it would fail...and I would be safe being dead....away from painful experiments and not having to face a life in utter loneliness, knowing that Spock had killed the rest of us augments!”

“That was the reason for your smile? You expected to be dead soon?”

“It was, and I would have fooled you all....if you thought that you could thaw me and use me as a lab-rat again!”

Bones looked at Khan: “You seem different now. No offence.....but you are not the arrogant sod Mr.-I-am-better-at-everything-compared-to-you-Khan-Noonien–Singh now!”

Kahn just looked at him and Bones thought for a moment: (“Shit...I overstepped a line there”)

Khan smiled, a genuine smile but a sad one too: “I am better....at a lot of things. I was made that way. Created as a tool....and misused. If you look at my actions out of context, back then, and now.....I give the appearance of a cold-hearted monster. But you have just told me that you intend to give my crew a chance....that you will thaw them. You have shown mercy and made an effort to protect the ones from the failed cryo-tubes. You have told me, that you have found evidence of how the Eugenic Wars really happened. The “why” and the “how”.....and that had altered your view on us augments. You have found evidence of how Marcus and his scientists had treated us...me...and that made a lot of you put quite an effort into giving my crew a new chance on a new planet. Give them civil rights. Something we never had before. We were just numbers...not persons. And under my regime we actually forgot to give us selves the civil rights!”

Khan shook his head: “Such a stupid thing to forget.....and with dire consequences!”

He turned his head and looked at Bones: “The remains of the “Facilities” all over the world became the seeds of the early “Foundation” that later became the Star Fleet Federation. Marcus was so nice to point out that that meant that I legally belonged to the Star Fleet...as a “thing”! He even showed me the laws that made me his property. To do with as he pleased. I was a slave....in the eyes of the law too. Less than a slave. A slave was at least regarded as a person and not a thing!”

Khan looked down on his hands that were around his now empty mug: “That meant that even if I escaped from Marcus, he would be able to, with the law in his hand, to ask anyone to hand over his property...me and the other augments...to him again and no law would be able to protect us. My “rebellion” could not be looked upon as a “freedom-fight” but just as a...a...stray dog that should be sent home again!!”

“No” said Bones. “it wouldn’t have worked that way. Remember, there are aliens, who doesn’t have a registered number in the data-base....and by God....they do have civilian rights never the less. Think of Keenser. Being a living sentient being can never be reduced to just a “thing”. Marcus wasn’t right, but I admit that before all the stuff about the Eugenic Wars became public knowledge recently....people might have found it difficult to see you as anything but dangerous monsters...which you indeed are not.”

Khan just looked at Bones and said. “Thank you!”


	12. Cryo-tubes and memories from the past

Jim was called to the med-bay and received the first of a make-shift treatment including giving him some of the nano-robot spheres directly injected into his bone marrow in the pelvis......and some extra platelets extracted from Khan’s blood too. This time taken with his consent, had Khan smirked.

Jim had to admit that after he had left the hospital-bed and had recovered a bit more 3 years ago, he had only felt better for about two years. Then this feeling had slowly faded and the last month he had felt increasingly ill, but didn’t want to do something before it got worse. Right now it wasn’t worse that he had been used to feel sometimes....even at the Academy. “There was nothing new there” had he tried to assure Bones.  
________________________  
It would be about 10 days more before they would arrive at New Vulcan and since Khan didn’t need to stay in the med-bay after the first couple of hours, he expected to be put in the brig again. But Bones told him that they saw no reason to believe that Khan wouldn’t behave since his crew was safe and not threatened by anything else than malfunctioning cryo-tubes, so Khan was welcome to stay in the cabin next to the med-bay. He would be needed there anyway.....making the serum for Jim from his blood.

Khan even gave more of his blood to Bones so he could inject it to other test-animals. This time in mice...because they were mammals, even if Khan said that he had rather much sympathy with those poor “lab-rats” as he put it and preferred that Bones used the test-tissues they had instead of testing it on living...or rather dead...animals. And the result was as Khan had expected: the dead mice were resurrected and even rather bad wounds were healed. But then...only 48 hours after, they began to show symptoms of illness.....they reacted faster than Jim had done because a rather large amount of blood had been injected. The test-tissue reacted the same way: first healing and then if the amount of blood had been too big, the tissue mutated and began to grow too fast.

Khan explained:“That was the problem that the scientists faced then....300 years ago. Those nano-robots and platelets sometimes got out of control....created tissue-growth out of control or began to repair something that wasn’t destroyed. I’ve seen that 300 years ago.....children bleeding to death from internal bleedings because of that or blood vessels clogged so gangrene occurred......and Marcus’ scientists faced the same problems when they injected my raw blood to involuntary human tests-persons....where ever they had got them from. It is only augments that can benefit from large amounts of raw blood. The serum I have made...That is something different. But I would rather that it would not be known, Bones, or scientist all over the Galaxy might try to abduct us augments and harvest our blood!”

“I understand” said Bones.

The two men sat in silence for a moment and the Khan asked: “Bones...may I see them?”

And Bones understood Khan’s need to be sure that his crew was on board and relatively safe.

“Of course” was the only thing he could answer.  
___________________  
They were standing in one of the storage-room where most of the cryo-tubes were placed. Technicians were monitoring them every second hour or so and there were alarms attached so they could be warned if more cryo-tubes would fail. The not-functioning ones were put aside and Khan just looked at them and said: “They’ll never function again...I’m even amazed that they lasted that long.”

Bones smiled: “Yes...you had quite a technician there...inventing both these and the more advanced to the humans. Is he in one of the cryo-tubes?”

“No”, Khan shook his head and turned towards Bones with a smile: “He is standing right in front of you! And he even ordered the Botany Bay built according to his blue-prints!”

Bones smiled back: “Then you definitely have to have a talk with Scotty and Keenser. They would love to exchange techno-babble with you!”

Khan smiled back....yes....inventing things. That was better than worrying, planning and fighting, better than being a warrior.

He had been walking around...touching every cryo-tube and Bones noticed that his mouth was moving and then Bones realized: He is saying their names!   
Khan looked at the freezers, that they had used for the augments from the mal-functioning cryo-tubes and said that it looked fine to him. He had a few discussions....friendly ones....with the technicians...and Scotty....who had a great part in inventing the new freezers and finally he came back to Bones and just said quietly: “Thank you for letting me see them.....and for trying to save those from the failing cryo-tubes”

Bones: “You are welcome!”

And then they stood in silence for a while again.

“You are not many left” said Bones: “And excuse me for asking. But can you reproduce?”

“We do not breed easily” said Khan looking at Bones and then Bones said: “And yet there were smaller cryo-tubes on board the Botany Bay! The blurred movie from when Marcus arrived showed it...and the remains of empty smaller cryo-tubes from ”Sector 31”.

“There were indeed...” said Khan and continued: “As I said: we do not breed easily. As it sometimes is the case with humans as well. Too stressful environments and the women would not ovulate. Being made to be soldiers it is hard to avoid stressful situations. I do not know why they didn’t remove that feature in us....the ability to have sex and reproduce....But it must have served a purpose.”

Khan was silent for a moment and then he continued: “Maybe our creators didn’t want us only to be soldiers. Maybe they expected us to survive....still be present after the wars had ended and we had survived our original purpose.”

Khan turned towards Bones: “That was maybe not a mistake when some of the scientists and the other staff at the facilities abused us sexually...”

“Oh my God...not that too...” was the only thing Bones was able to say.

Khan gesticulated towards the cryo-tubes and said: “It was not necessary to be good looking to be a soldier.....and apart from being healthy and having good genes that normally would make a person look more attractive.....we were made beyond that. At least us from the Indian Facility.... the European and the American facilities concentrated more on intelligence and strength. The other ones had other priorities: Just strength in China and Brazil and Japan, aggression in Iran and what they did chose to put their priorities in in South Africa we never found out. Africa kept itself out of the conflicts in the Eugenic Wars. They were busy enough mending their own problems......I think they abandoned the Eugenic programme after the first failures....we never found out.”

Khan continued: “As I mentioned: we do not produce children easily....and yet there were children born at my Palace when I ruled one third of the world. Mostly from the humans.....and they were in the destroyed part of the “Botany Bay”. I’m glad it was destroyed.....It would have been even more of a nightmare if Marcus had got his hands of the humans inside. I just hope that they died in their frozen sleep and didn’t feel a thing.” 

Again Khan looked at Bones with great sadness in his eyes: “My wife was in one of those cryo-tubes!”

“Your wife?!Why would she be among the humans cryo-tubes?”

“Yes indeed “my wife”!....I’m capable of feeling love, Bones....and her being amongst humans.....she was amongst the humans because she was human. One of the strongest and wisest women that I have ever met. Your commander Uhura reminds me of her: such an “I-don’t-put-up-with-any-of-your-shit-lady. Strong and confident....and Commander Uhura was ever so brave standing in front of those Klingons on Qo’noS...even if she lied through her gritted teeth about me!”

Khan smiled: “Even if commander Uhura is of African origin and my wife was of Indian origin, they reminded so much about each other. Not on the outside....but on the inside!”  
His smile faded and he was looking at the cryo-tubes again: “There were 6 smaller cryo-tubes containing augmented children. Two that were 12 years old. The last two from the Eugenic Experiment before it ended. Trained as soldiers just as the rest of us had been...and Marcus’ scientists thawed them being convinced that their immune system being younger would be more prone to fight alien substances from this century. The other 4 contained young children only 3 and 4 years old. The scientists didn’t get a chance to work on the younger children. I managed to make their cryo-tubes fail.”

Khan turned towards Bones: “I killed them. My own son was one of them. They had been allowed to be children and had even their Teddies with them in the cryo-tubes. My son’s last words were: “I love you, Father. I look forward to see you again!” But if you look at my doings without looking at the context....then I killed my own son and 3 other small children. Does that make me into a monster? Without the context...yes......but within the context? I even made sure that the blast that turned the whole “Section 31” into debris was that big that I was sure that no one....not even the augments if someone was still alive in those laboratories....would survive! Does that make me into a monster, Dr. Bones?”

“You are not....Marcus was the monster, as were your creators back then! We have found evidence the strangest places of what were done in those facilities back in time more than 300 years ago. What they did in the USA, in China.....and in Northern India close to Chandigarh...your facility. How the word “evaluation” had a more sombre meaning when they were writing protocols about your developments.....”

Khan interrupted him with such a low voice that it was almost a whisper: “I do not know about the other facilities in the world...how they made the augments in detail. I do not even know wherefrom the scientist got their genetic material to make us. I should have been made from material from the northern part of India...as were a lot of the other augments. But apparently not all of us. Maybe the different facilities all over the world shared genetic material. My name is a Sikh name...and my earliest memories are from a small village in the Himalayan mountain area. But look at me!! That my name is a Sikh name should indicate that I had a browner skin-tone and brown eyes....but here I am. Just as pale as everyone from the North-western part of Europe. I could pass for being English, German or maybe even from your home-region in the former USA. The only place where I would not fit in would have been my own region in India........” 

Then Khan paused and continued: “The “evaluation” yeah. You must understand......We were all created...fertilized..... in a petri-dish. Made like a patchwork-quilt of genetic material. A bit like Frankenstein’s monster, if you can remember that almost 400 year old story. It was just to see on the outside of him....stitched so unskilfully together from fragments. But the DNA in my cell-core is just as fragmented. And when people just do something randomly....it is sometimes bound to fail. The results....the “specimens” are maybe ugly to the eye, less intelligent, not fast enough, not reckless enough..... didn’t heal fast enough or cried too much when they were in pain. And even if it took 9 months in a surrogate-mother and then 3 years to grow up before the training could begin in earnest, the scientist often had so many to choose from......so many women that out of pecuniary distress would lend the scientists their wombs, that they would discard....destruct....dispose of the unworthy.”

Khan sighed and continued: “I was 5 when I was ordered to kill my first victim. One of us augments....a boy. Not one I knew well. He was a few years older than me. And he failed the tests. We were evaluated every month....and afterwards....some would be missing in our dormitories and class-rooms. You must understand, Dr. Bones” said Khan and turned his head against the doctor and continued: “They..our creators... couldn’t “afford” to let something live that wasn’t the utmost useful . We were meant to be tools....soldiers. And only a few of us would be selected to be leaders. We....the selected ones....were educated too and had to show from an early age that we were able to think, plan and lead others. But it was dangerous to show that you could do that. Our creators didn’t want something that potentially could outsmart them. We quickly learned to tip-toe through that mine-field: one the one hand showing that we were capable.....on the other hand that we were not capable of thinking that we could seize power. When I turned 17 I was the only one from my original class that had managed to conceal my intelligence enough to make our creators believe that I was intelligent but had no ambitions and no wish not to obey them!”

Khan continued: “We were trained more intensively and the whole political situation on Earth: Russia towards China, Middle East towards Europe, Japan towards China too...there were some unhealed wounds remaining from WW2 there...and Brazil towards the other countries in South America. It was just like before WW1....you could see the tensions....but you could not do anything about it! The “powder-barrel” was filled.....only the spark lacked. And then it started...but only on a small scale: two armies fighting over a mountain pass, a few hundred people killed around a certain factory and so on. When we were ordered out to fight battles in wars that we had not started and didn’t want, we met someone like us....other augments.....and to make a long story short: after having had endless encounters like that....a war not being a real war for 5 years, we had enough. We augments had coordinated with each other....and now we seized power.....several key-positions were occupied during what was the night or early morning on the 18th of august all over the world...and the humans woke up to totally different men and women of power...us augments!”

Then Khan smiled: “But that is more than 300 years ago....and the outcome of the Eugenic Wars was at least positive....an united Earth....a mutual government....that was ready to be a part of the Galactic Council. Even if that outcome did cost millions of lives....I personally think that it prevented both an atomic war and an ecological catastrophe...”

“I tend to agree” said Bones.


	13. Augments in the Star Fleet?

Khan felt so confident around Bones that he dared to tell him about his “dream”....the other reality he had experienced......( he left out the part though how he had changed himself into a masochistic slave with the help of Bones’ counterpart) but told about the part with the bomb-attack.... and Bones was puzzled and asked Khan if it was allright that some of the closest officers was told about it too? 

And that was the reason why Khan found himself together in a conference room with all the counterparts from the other reality, Scotty, Chekov, Spock, Jim.... and then of course Hikaru Sulu and Nyota Uhura. There had been no counterparts like those two in the other reality...and no Keenser.

They sat in silence as they heard about the other McCoy, James Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Chekov and the reason for the lacking Sulu and Uhura....that the ”Star Fleet Confederation” would rather see aliens than humans of another skin colour than “white” as commanders in the “Star Fleet Confederation”.

It was Chekov that tried to put into words what they all were thinking: “I zink that there must be more zhan one universe. Zcientists have talked about zhat for a long time. Ztephen Hawking waz one of zhe first to talk about it way back in zhe 20th zentury....and even we are ze result of a change....and we only knowz about zhat because Spock Prime moved from one univerz to another......I zhink that your mind waz zhe other plaze...but not your body. And maybe ze other Khan just slept here.....Zhat Andorran/ “Section 31” zedation iz very strange......if you read about it on zhe net.....”Transcendental” did they call it. Maybe it waz because of that?!”

And they agreed that that was the only explanation they would be able to find.....and Bones promised to destroy every single bit of the sedation....and Chekov promised to erase every trace of the sedation-formula that “Section 31” could have put on the net. The only risk was that someone had it written down by hand.

They all agreed that this reality seemed to be better. Khan mentioned that he would reserve his judgement until his hearing at New Vulcan was finished!

And then they wanted him to perform the Kobayashi Maru-test here in this reality too. Khan had only mentioned that he had beaten the computer in this game in the other reality. Somehow they all felt that that would be the final proof that the other reality had existed.

3 days before they should arrive at New Vulcan, Khan was sitting in one of the meeting rooms.....again with a large-screen-Padd in front of him. One of the hologram-screens that seemed to be floating in the air in front of you. All the officers that weren’t on shift were in that room and looked....first in shocked silence.......and later just silent as Khan blew up the disguised Klingon–ship and later explained why he had blown the Kobayashi Maru to pieces. Apparently killing the crew of the ship. Afterwards as Khan had pointed out the failures in the distress-signal everybody could see the trap. 

And then Khan said something: “Even if there hadn’t been failures in the distress signal, I would have fired anyway....for several reasons: there would never have been a peaceful merchant-star-ship in that area, not so close to the Klingon Border. If there had been a ship there, it would have been space-pirates anyway....and they follow the payer....in this case the Klingons. Why would 4 Klingon ships turn up so convenient for them as soon as I came close to the border? The space is huge.....How could they be there so fast? When it moves like a trap, smells like a trap, sounds like a trap....it surely is one......and by the way.... there has never been a human ship with the name “Kobayashi Maru” in the ship-register!”

And Khan told about that old navy test and the old “game” on computer that he had been exposed to 300 years ago....and everybody wondered why they hadn’t seen the trap before.

_______________  
Jim’s health improved...and no wonder. Jim was actually an augment now having Khan’s nano-robots in his body. Khan asked if he was allowed to do some tests and Jim said it was OK....and then...just the day before they arrived at New Vulcan Khan called Jim to the med-bay.

Khan asked if that what needed to be said could be said with only Jim, Spock and Bones present.

And Khan told why as they were alone: “Born in space, Jim, your genes had already mutated. That is why you could survive at Tarsus IV giving most of the “normal” food to the children in your care and you yourself eating all the strange things from the local flora and fauna. The strange thing is that you are allergic towards so many things from Earth, but not a single thing from Tarsus IV. And even if you are allergic and Bones fears every time that you could die from a severe allergic reaction and therefore never had dared not to treat you, I can assure you that you would have a very unpleasant time.....but you’ll never die from an allergic reaction! Jim....your birth in space had already augmented you! That is the explanation why you survived that long in the radiation-chamber and even survived the heavy radiation from the blast as the core came in to place. You are stronger than an average man.....and the damage that was caused by the radiation and was repaired with my blood and my DNA....well it has augmented you even more. Quite a lot of the DNA in your cells are mine by now....because you’ve received my raw blood! My senses are very sharp and I can smell that you are not totally human anymore!”  
And then Khan smirked: “But I’m still better at “everything”.....I’m that even amongst my own people....that is why I was their leader. But now to the next problem Jim. Augments are not allowed in the Star Fleet? And it applies to a lot of your officers too, captain. So what do we do?”

All 3 looked at Khan and Jim said: “What do you mean by that?!”

Khan answered: “I’m afraid that I’ve done something a bit unethical.....and definitely a bit illegal by human laws. I’ve scanned the DNA of a few of your officers....their blood samples were in the med-bay...but they have not given their consent to that scan.....Therefore “unethical” ....and I found something interesting.”

All 3 frowned at him a bit.....more out of confusion than anger.

And Khan opened the Padd’s holographic screen, so the other could see too.

He explained: “When I ordered the Botany Bay build it was not because we wanted an escape possibility, but because we wanted to explore space....or at least our own solar-system. The cryo-tubes were invented because it would take such a long time to travel in space. Remember .....it was pre-warp. When things went down the sewer...and a lot faster than expected, we were cornered and the Botany Bay was the only possibility. The alternative would have been suicide. Just like on “Masada”!”

“Masada?” asked Spock and Jim.

But it was Bones who explained: “The last fortress...situated on a rock plateau, near the Dead Sea in Israel. They were the last freedom fighters, men, women and children....against the Roman Empire. The year was 73 and the rebellions were surrounded by Roman Legions. The battles were hard and the rebellions were running “dry” of food and water....and weapons. The legionnaires had built a tall siege tower and the rebellions...or the freedom-fighters.....could see that there was no way out. 10 men were appointed to kill the remaining 950 people.....children, women and men. And they did....and then the last ten drew lots of who should kill the other nine and after that.. himself. As the Romans entered the Masada the next morning they only found corpses...960 of them”

There was silence for a few seconds.

And then Khan spoke: “We had talked about that possibility. We risked....as augments.....to end shackled on the test-tables in the labs again. We were condemned as war criminals “in absentia”...and when we had seen it on the television screens, we realised that we were looked upon the same way as the other augments all over the world. I admit that they had committed the crimes that we were accused of too, but I can assure you that we hadn’t committed those crimes. Yes....I had killed people....but only people that had committed crimes themselves: murderers, child-molesters, and so on. And we weren’t even sure that they...our enemies....would just kill our human followers and not torture them. We were not close to the mountains...so we did our equivalent of “find a cave and hide in it”...and did hide in the Botany Bay. I stayed awake....for 6 months...to make sure that the ship was on its course towards “Europe” before I froze myself and the idea was that we would return about 50 years later. And now to my point...”

And Khan pointed of the pictures of DNA-strands that were to be seen on the screen: “Our creators wanted to put a “copyright” on their creations....us. So if you look at my DNA here you can see little green dots everywhere. Markers in the “junk-DNA”...they do not interfere with the protein-synthesis...Junk-DNA is just there... And now to Jim’s DNA.”

The picture shifted and they could see DNA....now with fewer green marks.

“And..now yours, Bones...Fewer marks this time....but still green dots...”

And Khan showed the DNA of Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and a few officers more. Everyone had green dots in their DNA.

“Even you, Spock”...and Spock’s DNA turned up on the screen. He had green dots too.

“But how.....” said Jim: “I can understand mine....but the others?!”

Khan explained: “All over the world....in USA, in Brazil, in Europe, in Russia.....after the Eugenic Wars the humans got the augmented leaders and killed them. Their faces were well-known. But all us augments....we were not just soldiers....we had other abilities too. And some of the less important augments....the “pawns” of the chess-board...not the “Kings” and “Queens”......not the “Bishops” or the “Rooks”...but the pawns.....they managed to hide.”

And he continued: “My expression “find a cave and hide in it” could have been literately a cave in the Rocky Mountains, in the Ural Mountains...or in plain sight in a much too small village in" the back of beyond" in the middle of some vast cornfields in Iowa. You.....the officers of the USS Enterprise are the proof that they managed! They mingled with the locals....and did hide their abilities. If people asked how they could heal that fast, they mumbled something about “Granma’s secret ointment” and their healthy living. They must have hidden their strength and graduately over the last 300 years their augmentation “thinned”....and they didn’t have the nano-robots after the first generation. Just their good genes.”

And Khan explained further: “Augmentation” is just to put together the crème de la crème of excellent human genes: intelligence, strength, stamina, swiftness......characteristics that are prominent by your officers and you, Jim. Your “gut-feeling”, Jim, is your augmented brain sticking things together based on very few facts. Uhura’s ability to learn foreign and alien languages is an augmented ability. Sulu’s excellent sword-fighting ability is because of his augmented swiftness and ability to calculate his opponent’s movements. It is like that the whole way round. Even your ability to know exactly how much and which medicine that would be wise to administer.....You just “know” that Bones.....because your augmented brain already had made the diagnose.....and at medical school, you couldn’t understand why the rest found it so difficult to stay up and read for the exams. Just a few mugs of coffee....and you were all right!”

Khan turned towards Jim and said: “If we examine thoroughly enough I do not think that any of your officers do not have green dots in their DNA. The best genes brought you all to the Star Fleet Academy!" 

Jim looked at Spock and Bones: “Can we keep our mouths shut.....would you accept that, Spock?”

And then Spock actually smiled: “Khan had previously accused me of not being able to “break rules”....but I’m wiser now. Sometimes rules have to be bent. I’ll keep my mouth shut and work on the possibility for augments to be in the Star Fleet. At least as “New Vulcans”...that is if you can promise me, Jim that you do not in any way feel homicidal against me” Spock actually joked.

“What the hell, Spock,” said Khan: “That was not fair....not even I feel homicidal towards you, Spock!”

Spock looked at Khan: “And I’m a bit surprised, I have to admit, that you do not feel that way towards me. I’ve done you so much harm!”

Khan smiled back: “Believe me, compared to the Spock in my “dream” or whatever it was, you might have harmed me and made me believe that you killed my crew. I understand know the reasons behind your doings. Even if it was based on wrong assumptions.....but it was nothing compared to what your counter-part intended to do and did in the other universe! Here you are a man of honour, as is Jim and I’m glad I’m here in this universe despite what the outcome might be of the trial on New Vulcan!”


	14. On New Vulcan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’ve changed the time line from our real reality regarding the discovery of the structure of DNA and the mapping of the human genome to make it fit the creation of Khan and the other augments. The political climate all over the world in the 70’ties and 80’ties and the outcome of WW2 has been changed too. ___

As they arrived at New Vulcan they were to be beamed down near a rather big building. One of the biggest buildings on the planet. The planet had been inhabited by the last remaining Vulcans since Vulcan was destroyed in 2258. Some of the Vulcans had been on travel as Vulcan was destroyed. Others had inhabited other planets in colonies and had come to have a wish of “gathering together” on one planet, since so few of them were left. About 11.000 it turned out. The planet, renamed “New Vulcan”, had been known for years, but had only sustained a small colony of mixed races (no Vulcans). It wasn’t a friendly planet. Most of all desert and had been renounced as “to dry and hostile” to be interesting. The natural life had not developed higher than something close to tellurian cactuses and lizards. The size a bit bigger than Vulcan, but the density lower, which made the gravitational factor close to the original Vulcan. And on the search for suitable planets Spock Prime had found it.....and it reminded him of the original Vulcan. This planet’s air was more moist though, which indicated that there must be hidden water-reservoirs.

The “New Vulcans” had been rather busy building and reconstructing and making water-harvesters, that could “harvest” the moisture from the air and make it into liquid water. A method used on Vulcan too and no one had had the energy to explore where the hidden water that could moisten the air, came from.

  
Khan’s people would be very welcome. Every hand would be needed to make larger areas of this planet habitable. The planet was now a “witches’ cauldron” containing 20 different races......more or less suited for the dry climate. But even the moist Earth had people that were adapted to the nomadic and arid life-form that this planet would demand: those who were the descendants of the Aboriginals from Australia or the Tuaregs from Northern Africa....and other planets had suitable people too. Together all these people had until now made their own mixed culture.....some of it unmistakable Vulcan of origin, but with a large amount of other cultures too. A few, less than 100 Vulcans, tried to maintain the old Vulcan way, as others, like Spock’s father, had realised that without other races the last Vulcans would soon be extinct. They would even have to consider “breeding” with other races.  
____________________________

Jim had been furious as he had read the orders from The Star Fleet Federation regarding Khan.

“No way.....I’m not going to put him in shackles and humiliate him this way. No way! He has been awake most of the journey to New Vulcan, without shackles, so why on Earth should he be humiliated by wearing some now!!!”

Khan had just looked at Jim and said: “If it is so important for the people of The Star Fleet Federation. If it can calm their fear.....I do not mind! I’ve been humiliated like this before....even by you, Jim. One more time wouldn’t harm me! Do not risk your job because of that. It is not worth it!”

And then he had smirked: “And I’ll be able to get out of them any time, if I want to. They are just Klingon stuff......not strong enough to hold me. So let’s just put them on me and pretend that they can restrain me!”  
______________

To Khan’s surprise the hearing at New Vulcan was rather informal. He was just beamed down into a hallway outside a room where 5 of the eldest New Vulcans were sitting behind a table and Khan was told to sit down on one of the free chairs. There were water and fruit on the table.

  
Spock, Jim, Bones, Scotty, Chekov and Uhura were beamed down too. And then the door opened and Spock Prime and Sarek entered. They sat down at a table in the Back of the room.

  
The head of the council, the eldest Vulcan, spoke in Standard and asked if Khan preferred to speak in Standard or to continue in Vulcan? Khan said that he spoke both, but there were others present, who were better at standard. The old Vulcan then presented himself as T’wokk and told the names of the 4 other old Vulcans present and then he hesitated and looked at Jim: “Why is this man in shackles?”

Jim rose and said: “Star Fleet orders, sir!”

“Well”, had the old Vulcan said, “This is New Vulcan. And this is under New Vulcan laws!” He turned against Khan and asked: “Can you not be trusted?”

Khan looked at him and rose and said: “You have accepted my people. Given them a place of retreat. Right now scientists are just waiting for my help to thaw them the right way....to save their lives, if possible. I’m very grateful....in fact I’m not able to express how grateful I am. So....even if I wasn’t bound by my honour I would be bound by my gratefulness. And, it would be very illogical not to behave on the very planet that are going to be the future home of my people. So yes....to put it short: I can be trusted!”

The old Vulcan nodded at the guards and the shackles were removed.

T-wokk said: “I’m not sure what to call you? When Spock Prime and Sarek mention you, they refer to you as “Khan”....but it is a title....from Earth. Like “Emperor” or “King” isn’t it?”

“It is, and just like “emperor” and “king” it is an empty title now!”

T-wokk’s left side of his mouth moved upwards a fraction of a millimetre.....the equivalent of a loud human laughter: “I’m afraid that the Klingon Emperor would disagree!”

Khan smiled back: “You are right your honour. But I was only referring to conditions on Earth! This name “Khan” was given to me as a child, by one of my closest friends. It was quite early obvious that I was to become the leader of our little group and later the leader of us all from the Indian Facility...and even more than that. So I got that name at the age of 5. You must understand, your honour, that we did not normally posses names. We were things....tools. My “name” was 'H1976A198', and it meant “version H”, ”born in 1976”, A for “leader-material” and number 198 because 198 beings had been fertilized that year.”

“I see. Now, this is an informal hearing to find out if there is going to be a trial at all. The idea is to establish, if your reasons for your doings recently, 3 years ago, can be, not 'excused', but rather 'explained' by the stress you were exposed to being in former admiral Marcus’ hands. We have already established that you were under extreme stress and we have found evidence of that the accusations towards your people in the past were...exaggerated. So, to begin with. What are your expectations for this hearing?”

Khan looked at him and said: “The outcome for my people....or for me?”

T’wokk: “I most sincerely hope that you are not in doubt of the outcome for your people? No matter what the result of this hearing, or a later eventually trial, might be, your people would not be held responsible for your doings. They will be evaluated on their own, without any prejudice!”

Khan smiled a bit: “In that case: I see 3 possibilities: 1) I killed more than 2000 people 3 years ago. I doubt that humans would accept that I go free, no matter what Marcus and his scientists did to me. So possibility no 1: I’ll be executed. It can be done by beheading me. That would be the quickest. Results from Marcus’ research would show other....more painful and prolonged... methods of killing an augment!”

T’wokk and the other Vulcans looked disturbed.

Khan continued: “Possibility no 2: I’m going to jail for a not yet established period. In that case there could be a risk for possibility no 3: I’m being handed over to “Section 31” again. I haven’t got civil rights. And I forgot giving it to ourselves as we seized power over the humans 300 years ago. So legally I still do belong to Section 31 as a “thing”. In that case....and in case of possibility no 2...I’ll prefer possibility no 1!”

T’wokk just looked at him: “And you do not see other possibilities?”

“Oh yes...several. But the probability of these would be rather low, so I see no reason to indulge in them!”

“In other words: You expect the outcome of a trial to be your death....and yet you did nothing to make an escape. To avoid this hearing?”

Khan looked at T’wokk with a slight frown: “And jeopardise the only offered chance for my people to be thawed and judged for their doings now and not their previously doings? That would be to abandon them once more. I did it one time before, as I fled from Marcus, believing that he would kill everybody. I’m not going to do that again. You have offered them a safe harbour. What happens to me is insignificant compared to that!”

T’wokk looked at Khan for a few seconds, and then he spoke...in Vulcan...to the other 3 members of the tribunal. Then they all nodded and T’wokk turned and spoke to Khan again: “I’ve just given the order to give you civil rights. I am....we are....sorry that we didn’t think of that before. Apparently you do belong to this organisation still....and that is horrendous. My secretary will immediately see to that it is done. So, having civil rights and being protected by New Vulcan laws: what to you then expect as an outcome?”

Khan smiled: “Hopefully a chance to see my people awake, and then a sentence to jail for a yet indefinite number of years. No one, not even I, expect me to get free of killing so many people. I understand the wish for revenge from so many people. I’ve ruined so many innocent families.....for that I’m truly sorry and I have no expectations of "getting of that hook"!”

T’wokk nodded: “I see. Well we would like to know more about your past before we hear about what happened 3 years ago. So if you please?”

Khan looked around: “Do you want me to tell about that time 300 years ago when they made the Eugenic Programme?...Or is it irrelevant?”

T’wokk looked at Khan and answered: “We find it very relevant, so please continue!”

Khan nodded, “Very well, then. As I said, we were created as tools. Stitched together of various genes, both from humans and from other species too. Humans quite early learned about how to breed wanted features in dogs and cattle and crops, back from the time where humans became peasants, and the German monk, Gregor Mendel found out in the 1900th century the laws for heredity. They didn’t know back then what carried the things you inherited from your parents....some thought it to be in the blood....but never the less they knew the laws. Well someone sometimes forgot......the Pharaohs did inbreed until they made children barely able to live to adulthood. I remember something about Tut-Ankh-Amon......and sometimes in too remote and isolated mountain-villages where everybody was related to everybody, and the babies ended up having multiple difficulties!

Then in the 1920’ties, as an aftermath after the WW1, governments all over the world began dreaming about making super-humans, super-soldiers. They now knew more about genetics...and the last spark came when Phoebus Levene found out more about DNA and when two Americans in the 40’ties found out about the structure and in the late 60’ties the human genome was mapped out. Even Hitler, the German dictator, had heard about the DNA and made experiments where he tried to make “Arian” super-soldiers: tall, strong and blond and with blue eyes. He didn’t have the tools to separate and stitch together DNA then. Just used the “old-fashioned way” of bringing a male and a female together. The Russians experimented with apes and humans....not knowing that being two separate species the number of chromosomes would make a “fusion” impossible. At least at that time. They didn’t have the knowledge....nor the tools.”

Khan paused and looked at T’wokk and then he asked: “Do you wear socks, your honour?”

T’wokk just looked at Khan for a moment, and then he said: “Me?.....or Vulcans in general?”

“Oh....all Vulcans! In fact everybody on this planet!”

“I suppose you have a reason for your question, so yes ...we do!”

Khan smiled: “Imagine then that all Vulcans and other species here on this planet donated a pair of socks. I suppose you are not fond of, let’s say “orange” or...”bright red”....or “turquoise”....but never the less. There would be different sizes, different colours, different patterns. Then let us imagine that we put all those 50.000 pairs of more or less different socks in a large room. Turn off the light and send a man, blindfolded, inside to pick up a pair of socks. He would have to go in there many, many times to get a matching pair......and that was the way the scientist worked when they created us!”

“Now I understand your need for socks” said one of the other Vulcans.

Khan smiled: “It is easier to understand how randomly they worked, if you imagine this blindfolded man in that large dark room, trying to make to pairs of socks fit together! When the scientists worked that randomly, not everything succeeded! I was one of the eldest...even compared to the augments from the rest of the world. A version “H”...indicating that the previous versions didn’t succeed. They died? Were eliminated? I do not know...I only know that no one of us augments had a letter before “H”.”

Now one of the other Vulcans asked: “You talk about other “Facilities”...how many were there?”

Khan looked at him: “A lot of information about those facilities disappeared during the turmoil caused by the Eugenic Wars, as Sarek, Spock Prime and all the other persons, that have helped my people to a safe refuge here on New Vulcan, found out. But from my knowledge from then and from what I later learned, there were 9 Facilities in the world at that time: one in the United States, one in Brazil, one in Europe...in Germany. Then one in the Middle East..in Iran, two in Asia...in India and in China, one in Russia, one in Australia and apparently one in Africa...in South Africa. I think they never succeeded in making functioning augments in South Africa though, since we never fought against any from the African continent. I do not think they succeeded in Australia either. They were never a part of the Eugenic Wars either. When the wars began they just did cut off every connection to the rest of the world...not even aeroplanes were allowed in the Australian airspace....And no one was interested in the African Continent below Sahara...the African countries there were busy enough managing their own problems, and they just came forward when the united government for the whole world was formed 4 years after the last battle in the Eugenic Wars, just like the Australians.  
The progress in medical development, some of it progressed by shackling augments to steel tables and harvesting their antibodies....almost to the brink....and sometimes over so an augmented body died for good, because of exhaustion and malnutrition....well those progresses never benefited the African countries below Sahara before the Eugenic wars. So before and during the Eugenic Wars millions of Africans died of HIV, Ebola, West Nile Fever and Malaria....even Measles...and it could have been easily prevented....”

T’wokk looked at Khan and said: “Are you saying that augments were used to make vaccines and antibodies by being shackled and abused like lab rats?!”

Khan looked at him and said: “I haven’t got totally proof of that, but it is remarkably that those diseases that haunted mankind together with the plague, _the “Black death_ ”, all became curable as soon as the Eugenic programme started. Every single one of those diseases disappeared, and the first ones to disappear was the Polio and the “small pox”.....and they disappeared only one year after the first set of Augments were made...version “A”....”

Khan shook his head and continued: “Marcus’ scientist must have had results from more than 300 years ago to build on. They didn’t start from scratch when they “worked” on me and those of my fellow crew-members, who were unfortunate enough to be thawed. I risk my own life by telling you this, but our bodies might hold the key to the cure of many of the diseases, that haunt you now. That is why my people are safer here than on Earth. Both Sarek and Spock Prime, and others, knew how tempted scientists would be... knowing what our bodies are capable of!”

“I see” was T’wokk’s answer.

Khan continued: “The goals for the different Facilities, their dream of the “perfect soldier” did vary. The Chinese focused on strength and durability.....on stamina. So the Augments from China were big, strong, persevering and not very good looking. And not very intelligent. The men build as tanks and the women nearly not distinguishable from the men. That was why they wanted me to lead them afterwards. They knew they had limited abilities in that area.”

T’wokk looked at Khan: “Are you saying they were dense?”

“As thick as a brick, your honour. The Chinese made augments denser as normal humans!”

“I see!”

Khan continued: “I do not know much about the Russians. We met them in fights, and later when we seized power, we managed to obtain a fragile alliance with the Russians. An alliance that only lasted a few years. I had no interest in getting more land, more people to rule, neither did I need more ressources. But apparently the Russians wanted more power and I was forced to give up China if I didn’t want to see a war start all over again. Some mistook my accepting the ultimatum from the Russians, they had put in in diplomatic phrases though, but the meaning was clear, for weakness. But I think I had learned from history. Russia is a vast land with a lot of hidden resources. And they know how to fight in the winter. If I should make the same mistakes as Napoleon or Hitler had done....then I would truly be just as thick as the Chinese!  
The Facility in USA made most of the augmented people in the world, together with the one in Brazil. My estimate is that they made more than 8.000. The scientist's priorities were strength, stamina, beauty, fast healing and intelligence. They forgot “compassion” though, so the result were strong, beautiful, but cruel augments. The very picture of how augments were in the eyes of humans after the Eugenic Wars. The words: “superior ability breeds superior ambition." did fit nicely to them. They were so much alike.....and were the first to fight each other, when we lost our goal and started fighting against one another.”

And Khan continued: “In Europe, in Germany, they had the same ambitions as in USA...except that the scientists there couldn’t resist the temptation to make tall, blonde and blue-eyed augments. Hitler would have loved them! In Iran they made that huge mistake only to make young men, very aggressive young men. The creators had forgotten to take the sex drive out of them. It was always present and made them horrible soldiers and that had as a result that these augments, when they got out of the hands of their creators, abducted young females and made them pregnant...raped them....With horrifying results!”

Now Khan paused and after a few seconds he continued: “I do not know why the scientist in India and in China chose not to use artificial wombs. All the other Facilities used the artificial ones. Maybe it was lack of resources? Maybe it was just because the culture where the individual didn’t mean a thing, but the society was the most important? And cultures where women didn’t mean a thing? Ranked so low that millions of girls had to live with excruciating pain from “bound feet”, a mutilation of their feet making it impossible for them to walk? Or where female babies just were killed? That was in China.  
Or a culture that cruel that widows were supposed to let themselves be burned alive on the funeral pyre....because a woman was nothing without a man? That was in India. Neither in China nor in India had they problems finding men that thought that the money the family would get if they did “lend out” their women’s bodies to carry augmented foetuses would be an excellent idea. It sometimes went wrong...”

Khan paused and closed his eyes: “Augmented foetuses are strong...5 times as strong as a normal foetus. Babies sometimes kick, when they are in their mother’s wombs. They move around.....Do I need to elaborate?!”

T’wokk shook his head: “I think we understand!”

Khan then asked if he was allowed to take some water and T’wokk just looked at him and said, that he didn’t understand why Khan saw the necessity to ask...

Khan just took a glass of water held it up and said: “This is a dry planet. Water is valuable. It might even be seen upon as an object of status. That is why I asked. It might not be intended for a prisoner....as with the fruit. Fruit contains a lot of water and requires a lot of water. They are not fruits from New Vulcan...therefore they must either have acquired a lot of water to cultivate or a lot of money to have flown in from another planet. Therefore not intended for a prisoner...me!”

“I see” said T’wokk: “You have shown remarkably understanding for our culture...and you have been here less than 2 hours by now. But I can assure you that you are not looked upon as a prisoner.....and you are allowed to eat and drink. In fact I think we all could use a break and refreshments. We’ll meet again in half an hour!”

Khan stayed at the table. Even if he had talked to some of the officers at the Enterprise, he was now under the jurisdiction of New Vulcan...and despite the words of T’wokk....some kind of prisoner anyway, so he’d better stay in this room for now.

But both Sarek, Spock Prime, Jim, McCoy and Spock came up to Khan’s table and it was Jim who spoke: “Did you really imagine that you’d be executed or sent back to Section 31?!”

“I did. I had no civil rights...and despite McCoy’s reassurance that even aliens had rights, I was “between two chairs” here. And with no rights I would still belong to Section 31. I can assure you all, that I’ll rather prefer death than being a lab-rat in the hands of Section 31 again! In fact...I’m not even sure that my people would be safe enough here on New Vulcan. What can be done with and to our bodies is too tempting!!”

McCoy looked at Khan: “I think there could be a solution there!”

“Explain, please!”

McCoy pinched the bridge of his nose: “It is something from the medical history. How they made the vaccine against polio. They contaminated apes, chimpanzees, and killed them and used mostly their lever-tissue to make flasks with a thin film of tissue on the inside and forcing it to make antibodies. Somehow this way of getting antibodies disappeared. I’m afraid that is was because it was easier to harvest antibodies from living, or nearly dead, augments. And a poor black woman in the USA, Henrietta Lacks, had cervical cancer and a scientist took a sample from her in the 1950’ties. It turned out that her specific tumour-cells were ideal for experimenting with human tissue, instead of humans. Her cells, from that tumour, were “immortal”. They could practically grow everywhere, could be frozen....and thawed... and would still live. They were called HeLa-cells. And were the first sample and until now actually the best cells to use when you’ll understand how human cells function. So....here is my idea. If her cells were so efficient, how efficient wouldn’t your cells be, Khan...and your fellow Augments? But we do not have to shackle you or them down to steel tables. We could get a few tissue-samples....propagate them in the right surroundings and we’ll have “augmented biology” that could make any antibody wished for......without having to shackle some poor soul to a lab-table. It would just be tissue!”

Khan looked at McCoy, and then he smiled and said: “See...I told you that your doctoring skills were augmented! This is brilliant!!!”

Jim interrupted: “And then you could make a fortune...You’ll still keep the legal rights to that tissue. At least that was what the HeLa case ended with as I recall”

Khan shook his head: “No! We will give this freely. I’ll tell my people to donate. It would remove the treats against us. That would be more than enough payment!”

  
________________________

And after Khan’s people had been thawed, they all donated tissue. Not all of it was as good as Khan’s. As in everything else his bragging: “I’m better at...everything” again proved to be the truth. Only a few of the others tissue-samples were as efficient as Khan’s. And it was given for free. The only condition was that if it was shared, it should be for free too. “But the trees do not grow up to the sky”.....the Andorrian plague was one of the diseases, that the augmented biology couldn’t cure.

_________________________

After the break the council sat down again and they continued listening to Khan.


	15. Memories

In the room at New Vulcan Khan told: “My mother, Roopa, came from a small mountain village. A place where woman were a bit higher valued. A woman had earlier given birth to an augmented baby about a year before in the village situated in the next valley and had been given so much money that the village could have a new well made.  
It was a coincidence that my mother heard about the eugenic programme. She was visiting her sister in the low-land as the bus with the promoters from the programme arrived. My “father” home in the village had become ill and they would need some money if they should cope. My “father” was the only son in the family and had the burden of supporting the rest. My mother decided that she would volunteer and stayed the 3 weeks that was necessary in order to be impregnated with the augmented foetus. First the women were given hormones....to make them “pregnant” so they wouldn’t reject the foetus. And then the foetuses would be inserted. Rather uncomplicated and the first payment was nothing much for the scientists but everything for the poor people in the region. Such a payment could pay for seed-grain, 10 new axes or even 2 cows. It was a fortune! And when the baby was born they would even be paid more! No wonder that a lot of people wanted to take that risk....on their women’s behalf!"

Khan continued:  
"My mother returned pregnant to the village...and my “father” approved of her decision. My mother had already two sons and she later told me, that she had remembered that singing lullabies while they were still in her womb had calmed them, so she did the same thing to me. So I caused her no trouble while being in her womb.  
The scientist from the Facility had known the name of her village. But she was the only “carrier” in the neighbourhood so they must have forgot to collect me, when I was 5 months old. Normally they would “harvest” all the children made the same year. That meant the babies would be from 1 month to 11 months old. But the year where they should have “collected” me, the snow had closed the mountain pass and they didn’t want to use a helicopter for one child. The next year a flood had taken away the bridge...and the next year the snow came early....so I was 3 years and 5 months old when they came for me........"

Khan was lost in his memories and he continued to tell:

_The little boy was standing at the rim. Looking down on the grass-field near their neighbour-village. There were two black helicopters standing there. It wasn’t easy to see, but he had good eyes. In fact, Roopa’s strange pale youngest son was remarkably good at everything. Despite being so young he was often asked if there was something the elder children didn’t understand. Normally they were bundled so much up in their clothes...their woollen Pherans and with scarves and knitted caps that no one thought about “Noonien” being paler and with stranger eyes than the others. It was only in summer when they undressed to bathe in the lakes and run around in their trousers and shirts that the other children noticed how pale he was. And there were others with grey or green eyes too._

_They appreciated how strong and agile he was. He was the only one amongst the children, who was able to climb high enough up into the caves where the cave-bees had their nests and collect the honey. They would be standing on the floor in the cave and see that little boy, who had taken nearly all his clothes of in order not to be hindered in his climbing, crawl more than 200 meters up on the walls. At one occasion he did fall down, but had claimed to be unharmed and just need to lie down a bit to get his breath back. His mother had told him, that he was different and that one day some men would come and take him away. And that the villagers would be harmed and the village burned down if he wasn’t there. So he had to be careful not to be harmed or fall down in a crevice._  
_“Am I a prince then?” had he asked, remembering some of the fairy-tales being told in winter near the flames of the fireplace._  
_“Oh my beloved Noonien. It is quite the opposite. You are a slave....going to be a warrior and fight other people’s wars. You’ll have to show intelligence, but not too much or they will kill you. You must show strength.....but not too much. And you must not show compassion. They do not need compassion in a soldier!”_  
_And little 3 years old Noonien had understood._  
____________________________

 _The little boy turned around. He had seen enough...the black helicopters meant that he should leave soon. If he hurried a bit, he might have a chance to say good-bye to his mother before the men arrived. He ran fast but safely at a path where his fellow villagers only could walk with great caution. And as he burst into the house, he found his mother in the kitchen._  
_He gave her a hug: “They are here, mother. I’ll have to leave!”_  
_She smiled at him: “Remember what I’ve told you. But no matter what is going to happen to you, you must know that you have been loved. Not only by me, but by your brothers, your father and a lot of the people in the village. Go with peace, my Noonien!_  
_And Noonien went outside. Sat down pretending to play “kancha” with his brothers as the men came up the path to their village....knowing that his childhood ended there.....  
_______________________ _

Khan looked at T’wokk and continued: “They took me to the facility after they had paid my mother the rest of her money. She refused to cry....but when we left in the helicopters all the villagers were standing at the rim, watching me fly away...”

Khan sighed: “I never saw the place again until 17 years after. But the village had been abandoned. A few years earlier there had been mud- and snow-avalanches that had buried this village and several others......I gave up finding out what had happened to them....”

He looked at T’wokk again and said: “I suppose that is why we from the Indian facility were different...not as cruel as the others. Some might say “not cruel enough”....since I’ve always made the failure of valuing human lives. Despite my actions I have really tried to diminish the casualties. The bombing in London was only big enough to ensure that the tortured augments in the facility would die. I could have blown the whole building with the Daystrom-room to pieces....and I could have given the USS Enterprise a precise hit, destroying the life-support system and have retrieved my crew by walking over the crew of the Enterprise’s still warm corpses. I’m truly sorry that so many people were killed as the Vengeance crashed and I’m prepared to make atonement for that and the other killings I’ve made. But I do not regret to have killed Marcus. He had deserved a much worse death that the one I gave him. I’m sorry for breaking Carol Marcus’ leg. To be honest I didn’t notice her! I’m sorry for giving Captain James Tiberius Kirk a light thrashing....we could call it even with the trashing he gave me on Qo’noS and I’m truly sorry for all the grief and sorrow I had cost the families that have lost family members and friends because of my doings. I’m ever so grateful that you do not intend to hold my people responsible for my doings!”

There were silence in the room for a while and then T’wokk said: “We might have more questions for you, even if we have found so much evidence of what happened 300 years ago.....and what happened 3 years ago. But I think we can all use a meal and some rest. I hope everybody would accept that we continue tomorrow!


	16. Joachim

The next day they didn’t meet in the conference room until in the afternoon. Khan had been asked to assist in the awakening of the first 7 of his crew. He had told the scientists, that he felt exactly the same way when his wife had been giving birth to his son!

The scientists, who had been a bit uneasy around Khan, knowing that he was an augment, suddenly realised that he after all was just a human.....with worries and feelings.

The first cryo-tube was opened. The man inside the cryo-tube was browner than Khan....being that wasn’t difficult since nearly everybody except from albinos and the fair-hairiest Scandinavians would have a browner skin tone.

The man inside opened his eyes....light brown. And then he whispered: “My Khan...my dear Noonien. Did we succeed?”

Khan shook his head: “Yes and no, dear Joachim. “Yes” a lot of us survived and “no” we did not “succeed”. We are on another planet than Earth, but surrounded by friendly people. And 73 of us will probably make it. I was the first....more than 3 years ago...and now you are the second. Not any of our human followers have made it....And we are 300 years in the future!”

Khan was interrupted: “Your wife Aparna?!”

Khan bowed his head: “Didn’t make it. Neither did any of the children. I’m sorry......I couldn’t fulfil my promises. Forgive me!”

Joachim moved his hand and grappled Khan’s: “You told us that there was only a remote chance, and yet we are here, 73 of us. There is nothing to forgive. You have done so much more than expected....again. Don’t diminish your doings!”

Joachim had been helped out and was placed in a bio-bed. But only for 15 minutes. Then his readings were fine. He was given some clothes and he and Khan was sitting at a table in the room. Refreshments were on the table too. And the doctors left.

The two men were given a bit of privacy, so only those two were now present in the room. The others...that was Jim, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and a few of the Vulcan and human doctors who were monitoring the awakening of the augments, were in another room, but could follow the men on a screen.

Joachim asked: “Tell me more. What have happened? Why have you been awake for so long before us?”

Khan shook his head again: “Joachim, I have killed to ensure your safety. At 3 occasions I thought you were all lost and that I would only have revenge left. But I’ll have to pay for what I did to make you safe. You are my second in command and I give you the command. I cannot promise to always be here....”

Now Joachim looked worried: “I thought you said “friendly people”...are we in danger?”

“No, but I have killed more than 1500 people.....I do not think they will let me go without any atonement!”

“Execution?!”

“No, not that. Not now. Jail sentence I suppose...and Joachim. I’ll accept it!! If that would be the price for your security, I’ll pay it! You have all been offered a place on this planet, and citizenship...civil rights! A place to stay and safety.....as safe as life can be. A lot of people have worked their arses off to get you here, and have worked to save our people even from malfunctioning cryo-tubes......And if the price is that I go to jail, I’ll do it!”

Joachim shook his head: “There is still nothing you would not do to ensure our safety. You are my leader and I’ll accept your decision even if I disagree!” Joachim hesitated for a moment and the he said: “You said “a place on this planet”. Has humanity found a better way of travelling in space?”

Khan smiled: “Yes, and at an incredible speed. “Folding” the space, doing “warp”. Being able to travel faster than light and yet not. Einstein was right, nothing can travel faster than light. But Hawking was right too. “Space” and “Time” are two sides of the same coin.....and “The Great United Theory” was found. “Space” can be “folded” and a ship can travel several light-years in just a few days like that! Not alone that.....we are not alone. There are hundreds of other species....most of them humanoids....and yes, Joachim, they have all the same strands of life...the DNA. Even the strange species...the Banderschnatchers and the Squidds...They have DNA all of them!”

“And this planet who has welcomed us....what are they?”

“Most of all Vulcans. Their planet was destroyed about 6 years ago and they have found this. Other species are living here too. Humans, Vulcans, Cardassians, Orions, Regelians......and a few others. The majority is Vulcans and Humans though.”

“And now us..”

“Yes, and now Augments....but we would just be one of many species!”

And he handed Joachim a Padd and told him to read. They had put the most important facts together in a file. Joachim red it at an incredible speed....and the ones watching on the screen thought the same but it was Jim who put it into words: “Oh no....they are not better at that too?”

After Joachim had read he looked at Khan: “I see...well it is quite a mouthful to get used to! How long did you say, that you have been awake?”

“Nearly 4 years.. and well, it is quite a story. And I’ll like to wait a bit to tell about it. Do you want to meet one of the inhabitants?”

“A Vulcan? Yes..I’ll better get used to the thought!”

Khan looked at the camera and gave a small nod. They had agreed on that meeting Spock as the first alien would be a good idea.

Spock entered the room and Joachim rose and looked at him: “How am I supposed to greet you?” he asked.

“I suppose a “Hello” of maybe a more formal “God day” would suffice” answered Spock dryly. And then he bowed his head and said: “A welcome to you, Joachim. I’m sorry... but do you have more names, just like Khan Noonien Singh?”

Joachim shook his head: “No, just that one. Unless of course I should still use the way we were named. Oh my God, that is more than 300 years ago! In that case I should use the name of my...creator....too. In that case it would be “Bidri”. But it holds no good memories...and when we seized power, we just used one name!”

“Well, I’m known by one name too. My name is “Spock” and I’m a Vulcan-Human hybrid. My ...mother....was human. And my father is Vulcan. He is one of the persons, who had helped getting you here!”

Joachim looked at Spock and said: “I noticed that you hesitated when you mentioned your mother, and I remember what I’ve read about the fate of your planet. My condolences offered.....if it still is something you say? Even if it is....somewhat a tame thing to say...regarding the enormity of your loss!”

Spock nodded: “It is still a phrase used! And thank you!”

The two men looked at each other. And then Joachim said: “Oh I’m sorry, where are my manners? Please sit down!”

He asked if he was allowed to touch Spock and Spock allowed it. Joachim’s fingers touched Spock’s hands and fingers gently and then he touched Spock’s face and his ears.....and Khan was almost giggling.

Joachim turned towards Khan and said: “What?!”

Khan smiled and had tears in his eyes from suppressed laughter: “I’m sorry, But Spock is very patient with you! Vulcans have erogenous zones in their fingers and ears! I’m sorry. I should have known that you would be curious and scientific, Joachim...and I should have thought about telling you about Vulcan physiology! What you did to Spock was close to a kiss and....fumbling in his crotch!”

Spock turned his head and looked at Khan: “Joachim’s actions were those of a curious child...innocent! It was your remarks that made it....less... innocent!!”

He turned towards Joachim: “You are allowed to examine me further....even my ears and hands!!”

But Joachim just touched Spock’s face and arms now: “You have a green tone to your skin. Copper-based blood?”

“It is.”

“But you have a slight red tone too. Making you more yellow than turquoise or green. Haemoglobin too?”

“I have!”

“Then I suppose you bleed a more yellow tinged blood, than green.”

“I do”

“Your skin is soft....and yet thicker than humans. As thick and durable as the skin of us augments. Without knowing for sure....your original planet was very dry, a dessert planet?”

“It was.”

Joachim smiled and let go of Spock’s hands: “I’m grateful for your patience. I’ll just hope that I would not offend other races by touching them the wrong places!”

Spock looked at him and then at Khan: “I can assure you that most of the known races in our two Quadrants are not easily offended. Especially when you tell them that you were born 3 centuries ago! And if you find that you’ll need another name besides Joachim....then be free to choose. No one is going to use a name you do not find “comfortable”!”

Joachim answered: “I understand that you have only one name too?”

Spock shook his head: “No, I have several, but they a close to be unpronounceable by the human tongue. Khan is the only one from Earth that has been able to pronounce it correctly”

“Because I was thinking”, continued Joachim, “we are to become a part of this planet. Wouldn’t it be suitable if we chose a name close to a Vulcan name as our second name...if it is not improper behaviour?”

Spock actually smiled...a fraction of a millimetre: “I think that that would be looked upon with great approval!”

 

Khan smiled: “In Vulcan terms it means: “I think it is a great idea and so would the rest of the Vulcans!”

 

Joachim smiled at Spock: “I understood that!”

 

“I’ll see to that a list of pronounceable names is made!”

 

The 3 men sat and talked for a while and then Spock left.

 

Joachim looked at Khan: “Is Spock always that closed and talk like that?”

 

“Oh my god. He was showing the most accommodating and emotional behaviour I have ever seen. He almost smiled. But do not read the Vulcans wrong. They are not emotionless....on the contrary. Their emotions are strong and run deep. But it caused them almost to destroy themselves. So they are following the “ways of Surak”. A philosophy that teach you to manage your feelings. I think it could be useful for us too. Exactly at that point we could use some guidance.....at least some of us!”

“You are thinking of Joachin, Nadim and Hakeem and a few others?”

“Exactly!”  
______________________

In the other room where Jim, McCoy and the other officers from the Enterprise were standing they looked at each other and it was McCoy who put it into words: “An remarkably fast adaptation to all this knowledge: 300 years in the future, a lot of them gone, another planet, a galaxy full of species and meeting one of them. It is quite a mouthful to accept within only half an hour from being awakened. And to him he was put into cryo-stasis only a few hours ago! Remarkably....and I don’t even think Khan was given that much time to adapt by that arsehole Marcus!”

Scotty looked at the two men: “And despite everything we and Marcus have done to Khan and his people, he trust us!”

McCoy shook his head: “He doesn’t. Not totally! But he has no choice. Deep down he still fears that it is a scheme....a plot...a trap. Just another way to abuse, misuse, torture them. Do you know what he did, as he found out just after Spock hurried him to the med-bay?”

Jim and the rest of the officers frowned at him: “No?!”

McCoy shook his head: “He knelt down on the floor. Offering himself to be a lab-rat. He knows what scientists can to with and to his body. And yet he offered himself to endless years of pain and torment, if I only would spare his crew. He even offered to stay alive as a lab-rat, if he was only allowed to kill the rest of his crew. Only to spare them the same faith. I’m afraid that we, in the remnants of the files obtained, have only seen “the tip of the iceberg” of what “Section 31” had done....to Khan and to his people. No...he doesn’t trust us.....but he has chosen to take the risk. Calculated with this immense intellect of his...of which he has only shown a fraction. Believe me, the old records said that Khan as the only one went totally of the chart. His IQ was so high they couldn’t measure it. He is a genius......more than Sidis, more than Einstein, more than Hawking. Maybe an IQ of more than 300. Believe me. He has calculated every possibility: are we speaking the truth? Will we thaw his people? Will they be allowed to leave New Vulcan, if they want to? Is he going to be executed after all? Is his people? Every movement we make....every action is noticed...and put into his calculations. Jim, Khan is not a kitten, not a cat. He is a full grown tiger...and right now he is watching. If we mean him and his no harm, he’ll remain passive. And he and his people could be very valuable allies. But do him wrong.....and we’ll see his wrath.”

Jim just looked around in the room that had got totally silent as McCoy spoke.

“And how does that makes him different from any other species in the Galaxy?!?” Jim just asked and continued: “Isn’t it how the rest of us would react in the same situation? “Wait” and “watch”? We, humans, then and now, have given him no reason to believe, that we could be trusted, have we? I have betrayed him, Spock has betrayed him, you McCoy too....and Uhura....and Sulu. Not one of us is innocent. That he has made this decision, that he can trust us for now and until we have proven otherwise......well that shows only how forgiving a man he is. I’m not sure I could show such greatness being in his shoes. And he still have to volunteer to this hearing that might or might not lead to a trial that might or might not lead to.....a jail-sentence, that he would accept as long as his people are safe. I’m not sure, that I could do that! Or even worse....that Section 31 is still out there!”

Jim turned around and went through the door: “Trust is not something you can expect. It has to be earned through actions. And I’m not going to keep my mouth shut today during the hearing if it is not going in the right direction. Even if it should cost me my job in the Star Fleet. Too many has kept their mouth shut too long during this whole ordeal....and I was one of them!!.”  
______________________

Joachim, feeling all right, agreed to assist awakening the 6 others planned for that day. Khan would have to go to the hearing.

Just before Khan left Joachim together with the scientists with a promise of returning later as the rest had been awakened, Spock turned up with a list of more than 80 names: “A lot of them are no more in use. Their families became extinct as Vulcan imploded. But I’ve asked other families.....and they thought it to be such a good idea, that your augments would sort of “belong” to their family, if you would do them the honour of choosing their name. They are marked with a star.”

“I do not understand” said Joachim: “They do not know any of us...and yet they are speaking of “honour”. For that case.....we could all be monsters! How do they already trust us?”

Spock looked at him: “If you all are just a fraction as honourable as Khan, you can be trusted. He was not the one who betrayed. It was us...Look at the names and tell us later what you’ll chose!”

And he turned around and left. Time for the next part of the hearing.


	17. A bit more from the past

As they were seated around the tables again, T’wokk would like to hear how the thawing of Khan’s people was going before they continued and Khan told that his second in command, Joachim, now was in charge and the procedure was already so advanced in time, that he expected to see 6 more awakened this evening.

“And you do not want to be there, when they open their eyes?” T’wokk wanted to know.

“No, your honour. It is better, if it is Joachim who greets them. I’ve been in this century for 4 years, 1 year and a half awake. There are things I do not question any more.....they are inevitable to me, by know. Joachim has just arrived...he’ll understand them better and would be able to make the others understand it too!”

“Very well then. We would like to hear more about the Facility where to you were taken, age 3 and a half.”

Khan explained: “I was not the only child in those helicopters, but the others were younger. Around 3 years old. 6 of them. As soon as we landed at the facility we were shown into a room, and left. I told them quickly what my mother had told me: We were going to be soldiers. We could expect no mercy from the grown-ups around us. If we wanted to cry it would have to be in silence...and the only comfort we could expect would be from our own. My mother had thought me the basics of meditation...and I hurried to show the others. A way to keep calm.....a way to avoid crying. We were left alone for several hours. 8 hours. There were water and food and the room was warm enough and there were toilets....but I think that it actually was the first test. Human children left alone...at the age of 3...and 3 and a half. What would they do?”

T’wokk looked around in the room: “Would a human please answer this, well I’m sure, rhetorical question? But never the less...”

Jim answered the question: “Cry.....most of them. Unless they were used to be fugitives. In that case they would remain silent.”

T’wokk just looked at Jim and then he looked back at Khan: “Is that the answer you expected?”

Khan smiled: “It was...and Jim is right. Fugitive children learn quickly to remain silent, as did we. We were distributed to several dormitories and I met older augments. The eldest were about 7 at that time. The youngest not even “delivered” yet....or even made yet. When the programme finally stopped 13 years after I was brought to the facility, I was 17 and at that time the youngest augments were 5 years old.”

Khan continued: “We were not allowed to keep our names, those of us who had lived in families and had not been brought to the Facility as babies. So we were given a code...and were expected to react on that. They soon found out that a name was easier...and I was allowed by my “caretaker”, the man who was in charge of my group, to keep my “Noonien” together with my creators surname “Singh”. It was the way we were named. Often the “caretaker” was the very scientist, who were in charge of making specialized augments with different abilities. There were only a few “Singh”’s...since they were meant to be leaders. But we were all trained to be soldiers. Well....In the beginning the training wasn’t that tough. Not worse than the training acrobats gave their children in the circus-world...or the training elite-gymnast received. Or elite-athletes. In fact ....some of the trainers from those “worlds” had come to the facility to train us. From Russia...even despite the tension between Russia and parts of Asia, especially India after the WW2, and from Germany. At the age of 5 the real warrior training began: Martial arts, weapons...and they began to test our ability to heal. We were deliberately wounded...and should fight despite that. We were taught to ignore pain, to bandage ourselves and others so we could continue to fight. And we, with the label “A”, the leader-material, were educated as well. In the class-rooms. At the age of 15 I had as much knowledge in more than 13 topics as a professor. So when I brag and say that I’m better at everything, it is not just empty talk. I did undertake a professorship, or a level equivalent to that, in mathematics, biology, biochemistry, physics, history, geology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, social science, astro-physics (the little we knew then), technology and economy...and was tip-toeing through a mine-field. I had to show, that I was intelligent. But not too intelligent...so my creators did only know of 5 of my topics. The rest did I...and others..hide. I was the best at hiding. When the programme ended, I was the only one from the original class still alive! One of the few “A”s”

Khan paused and then he continued: “We are not immortal, but we live longer than the average human. The reason, why we can repair ourselves, is caused by two things: platelets in our blood and ....nano-robots. Not alone am I an augment, but I’m actually a cyborg too. Mostly in my bone-marrow in my pelvis, in my femur and my humerus are little “factories” which make those nano-robots. And how the scientists invented those back in the 1970ties....that’ll remain a mystery.”

Khan continued: “They took a lot of blood-samples. Mostly to determine how our nano-robots worked. My mother had got a syringe when she was impregnated with me and was told to inject the contents in me as soon as I was born. Without the nano-robots we just have a very efficient immune-system...and we would heal faster than normal humans. Even re-grow to some extent. But it is the nano-robots that make miracles. Prevent us from bleeding to death and rebuild organs and limps.”

Khan looked at T’wokk: “Do you want me to continue?”

“Yes please!”

“Well, I won’t go into much detail about how they trained us. Just tell that they did eliminate those who didn’t meet their expectations. We were made randomly as I tried to tell with the story about the socks. And when people just do something randomly....it is sometimes bound to fail. The results:the “specimens” that were maybe ugly to the eye, less intelligent, not fast enough, not reckless enough or didn’t heal fast enough or cried too much when they were in pain. Or those where nano-robots failed and made more damage than they healed. All those failures were....eliminated. And even if it took 9 months in a surrogate-mother and then 4-5 years to grow up before the training could begin in earnest, the scientist often had so many to choose from, so many women that out of pecuniary distress would lend the scientists their wombs, that they would discard....destruct....dispose of the unworthy. Some of them were kept alive in a building nearby. Shackled to beds and injected with various diseases...and then the antibodies would be harvested. We didn’t know then...had just heard rumours. Then one day, I was 15 at the time, some people from “outside“ had heard about the smaller facility. It wasn’t guarded as heavily...and they managed to get inside. Their goal was to get their hands at so many augmented children as possible. The procedure to harvest the antibodies could be done in a normal clinic...and everybody wanted to have their own antibody-deliverer. We didn’t hear about it until later, and they showed us pictures. The political climate had deteriorated. Governments couldn’t provide security any more...so they showed us the pictures to scare us from going “outside.” There was so much blood...they must have torn the poor boys and girls apart in their greed for antibody-providers. No one left that house alive....... ”

Khan had stopped talking...and the persons in the room looked at him in horror. No, nothing had been said in the ancient files about such events, nothing.

T’wokk looked at Khan and asked: “Do you need a break?”

Khan smiled: “Just a short one. I need something to drink.”

_____________________

After a short break Khan continued. Some of it he had told Bones before. But it was new for the rest of the persons present.

“It was not necessary to be good looking to be a soldier and apart from being healthy and having good genes that normally would make a person look more attractive, we were made beyond that. At least us from the Indian Facility. The European and the American facilities concentrated more on intelligence and strength. The other ficilities had other priorities: Just strength in China and Brazil and Japan, aggression in Iran and what they did chose to put their priorities in in South Africa, we never found out. Africa kept itself out of the conflicts in the Eugenic Wars. They were busy enough mending their own problems. I think they abandoned the Eugenic programme after the first failures, but we never found out. Our creators might have had other plans for us...when the war had ended...... That was maybe not a mistake when some of the scientists and the other staff at the facilities abused us sexually...”

T’wokk nodded: “Yes we have found evidence for that, too”

Khan just looked at him and then he continued: “I do not know about the other facilities in the world. About how they made the augments in detail. I do not even know wherefrom the scientist got their genetic material to make us. I should have been made from material from the northern part of India...as were a lot of the other augments. But apparently not all of us. Maybe the different facilities all over the world shared genetic material. My name is a Sikh name... But look at me!! That my name is a Sikh name should indicate that I had a browner skin-tone and brown eyes....but here I am. Pale as it comes!”

He paused for a moment and then he said: “But initially we were made to be soldiers. Trained to kill. I was 5, when I was ordered to kill my first victim. One of us augments....a boy. Not one I knew well. He was a few years older than me. “They” brought others to the Facility, humans, to be executed. And we obeyed. The worst was that our creators expected us to kill our own. Those who failed the tests! It was a test of how obedient we would be. We didn’t dare not to obey....not after we had seen what would be done to those who didn’t obey.”

Khan paused and took a deep breath: “I was a version “A”, made to be a leader. And I was chosen early. I was only 6 when the other augments told me that they had chosen me amongst the other “A”’s to be their unofficial leader. They found me to be the best to hide my abilities. That was when one of them gave me my nickname “Khan”....it is an Asian title, not an Indian one. Djengis Khan might come into mind....that Mongolian ruler that actually threatened Europe’s stability."

Khan continued: “As time passed, I was now 15, we were trained more intensively and the whole political situation on Earth: Russia towards China, Middle East towards Europe, Japan towards China too...there were some unhealed wounds remaining from WW2 there...and Brazil towards the other countries in South America, just got worse and worse. It was just like before WW1. You could see the tensions, but you could not do anything about it! The “powder-keg” was filled, only the spark lacked. And then it started, but only on a small scale: two armies fighting over a mountain pass, a few hundred people killed around a certain factory and so on. When we were ordered out to fight battles in wars, that we had not started and didn’t want to fight, we met someone like us, other augments. And to make a long story short: after having had endless encounters like that, a war not being a real war for 5 years, we had enough. We augments had coordinated with each other....and now we seized power. Several key-positions were occupied during what was the night or early morning on the 18th of august all over the world...and the humans woke up to totally different men and women of power...us augments!”

Kahn stopped talking for a while and then he continued: “Maybe I was naive. But I thought we augments had a common goal. An united Earth. But the augments started fighting each other. Maybe it was true, that superior abilities call for superior ambition...and superior cruelty. The first to walk their own way was _Ashaf Ferris_ from Brazil and _George Blume_ from USA. First they joined forces and kept the rest of us away...and then Ashaf killed George and ruled both North and South America. Not in a wise way. She expected to be treated as an Egyptian goddess and drew all resources to her own people and followers. There would have been enough for all...if she had distributed everything close to equal....but the result was hunger in one place and superfluity in another. In Europe _John Ericsson_ decided to be on his own too. _Bernhard Malkowitch_ ruled Russia and didn't want to cooperate. Later he threatened to start a war if the Chinese wouldn't join him. He wanted more resources....That was near the end of the Eugenic Wars. That we augments couldn't work together left me with first the raving lunatic augments from Iran and later the far too stupid augments from China. I know it is not nice to describe them like that....but is was the truth. That the scientists in Iran nearly only emphasized aggressiveness and only making young men....that was too stupid and bound to fail. They were terrible soldiers and actually most of them died fighting each other....after they had killed their creators. At least the augments in China knew that they were not intelligent enough to rule by themselves and they asked me. I hadn’t planned on being the exclusive ruler over more than a quarter of the Earth’s population: China and all the other countries in Asia...even Japan, who still had some open “wounds” left from WW2 towards China. But I managed to make them work together. I had,well the word would be “Vassals”,governors, who were loyal to me and who would rule their part of the countries according to my orders. And yes, I had a firm hand, and yes I had people killed. Mostly people, who thought it to be a good idea to kill all the girls in a school, just because they had committed the crime of wanting to learn. Yes I have killed leaders of villages, where they found it appropriate to let grown up men marry 5 years old girls and expect them to fulfil the duties of a grown up woman when they were 10!”

Khan’s eyes were shining with anger now: “I killed men, who had stoned women to death because they had committed the crime of talking to another man. I killed those men, who had pushed young women back into the flames of a burning home, because they “dared” to flee from the flames in their nightdress and without their “burka” on.....I forced my laws, that would ensure equal opportunity for education, for distribution of food and wealth, upon reluctant villagers, who still thought they were living in the 13th century! I made laws that gradually would make people work together instead of working against each other. I wanted to remove the factors that had led to the political instability and work towards a united government of the whole Earth. Oh my...I even wrote a book about how such a government could function. 15 different scenarios...from “enlightened despotism” to “real democracy”. How originations should be build, how the internal hierarchy ought to be for it to work. From smaller organisations to some in planet-like scale.”

Khan took a deep breath: “But that is more than 300 years ago....and the outcome of the Eugenic Wars was at least positive, an united Earth, a mutual government, that was ready to be a part of the Galactic Council. Even if that outcome did cost millions of lives....I personally think that it prevented both an atomic war and an ecological catastrophe...”

There were total silence in the room and Khan looked around: “What is wrong?”

T’wokk looked around and then he asked: “That book....what did you call it?”

Khan looked at him with a frown....and a look of confusion and then he said: “Oh...I tried to be a bit sarcastic when I wrote the title, but I never finished it. I called it “Pax Romana II”

It was Jim who spoke: “Oh my....Khan, do you realise that that was the advises in that book, that were used to make the United Government after the Eugenic Wars? That it was the very book that reformed the Galactic Council?! It is THE book that almost every government in this quadrant look into, if they want to make efficient organizations!!! I hated that book...it was mandatory reading at the Star Fleet Academy.....but it was so useful...and you wrote it?!”

Khan stuttered a bit: “But I never finished it!”

T’wokk: “Some must have found it and published it. It was, amongst other things, the reason why Earth was accepted in the Council.”

Khan looked at T’wokk and asked: “You, the other races must have kept an eye on us for a long time. Why didn’t you intervene during WW1 or WW2 or during the Eugenic Wars?”

 

T’wokk looked at Khan: “There are rules.....no contact before they can travel in space....”

Khan looked around...at the others present: “It was my Botany Bay?!”

T’wokk nodded: “Yes....and the first moon-landing in 1969.....but you humans were so violent, so you would have to prove that you could work together too, or else we didn’t dare to “let you in”...and give you the “warp”.”

“The united Government on Earth”

“Exactly!”

Khan looked at T’wokk and said with a smile: “That is, with all respect your honour, utterly bullshit!”

 

“I beg your pardon!?”

 

“The Romulans and the Klingons...and as if I remember correctly, 7 other species in the Alpha and Beta quadrant are so much more violent than humans. So that is not what scared you. The Gremorns do not have anything remotely close to democracy since their political system is based on the number of ridges on their skulls and the colour of their ears......and they do not have a united government, so you’ll have to contact more than 200 individual “kings” whenever you want something done on their planets. So it is utterly bullshit that it was our violence or our lack of unity that kept you from contacting us. The truth is that we, humans, even without augments, scared the hell out of you!”

“Would you please elaborate?” T’wokk’s face was emotionless but Khan could see the amusement.

“There has never been a known race that have developed so rapidly as Homo Sapience Sapience! We...humans....are only 150.000 years old. The Homo Habilis was here a million years.....and the stone axes they made were the same one million years after. But Homo Sapience Sapience went from petroleum lamps to moon landings in less than 70 years. From stone-age to using metals in less than 10.000 years. We developed agriculture...and writing.....and complicated cities when our species was only 100.000 years old as a species. We had computers only 200 years after the first industrial revolution and had discovered the power of atom-bombs around the same time. It is not our violence that scared the hell out of the Galactic Council...it was our ingenuity!!”

T’wokk bowed his head: “A very precise and accurate analyses, Mr Khan. And.....I think it calls for a break before we continue."


	18. "Flee or die"....a decision made in the past

After the break they continued. Khan had been given time to check up with Joachim how the awakening was going and Joachim could tell that all 6 were doing fine. Not as fine as he had been. But fine. 3 men: Hiru, Hakeem and Pula and 3 women: Abi, Fuli and Iksa. “They were looking forward to see Khan again!” had Joachim said. And they had coped fine with the facts: 300 years in the future, not all of them had made it, hundreds of other species and travel in space...and being on another planet.

Khan looked worried as they met in the conference room again...lost in his own thoughts.

T’wokk started the meeting: “We are still in the past, Mr Khan. Could you enlighten us a bit more about what happened after you seized power in your region?”

Khan closed his eyes..and it took a few seconds before he answered: “Please. You have said it so many times....but...”Khan” would be fine actually! Not the “Mr.”...it is not necessary, your honour!”

“Well” had T’wokk said, “Then I’m not “your honour”. This is not a court-room! My name would do!”

Khan had smiled a small smile and had nodded and continued: “Well, we had all the opportunities. We had all the power needed to lead Earth's population towards a more golden future. An united effort could have brought us there. A synchronized effort could have reduced pollution, made a more even distribution of food and primary products. Earth was rich...fertile. It was a question of redistribution. And yet, people started fighting for water, for food, for raw material...and it was so stupid. Because during those fights the very things, they were fighting for, were destroyed. There is a word: that values were lost during WW1 that could have bought a house for every family on Earth at that time. During WW2 it were values lost equivalent to a nice house and a car.....I do not dare to think what the Eugenic Wars did cost...but it was certainly more than that. So stupid!”

Khan paused: “Well, as soon as I had established a government in India and had found followers in the other countries, I began to consolidate my power. Making new laws.....and in some places forcing people to follow them. Actually the take-over ran smoothly. I think people just wanted someone to be in charge instead of the headless chickens, that had been the politicians in the last 10 years before we took over. The first year everything was running smoothly......and it was in that period I made the plan for travelling in space and designed the Botany Bay and had it built, together with the cryo-tubes. Astronauts were being educated and the idea was to explore Mars. But already the second year things went downhill. It started in USA and Brazil.... and after the murder of George, Ashaf went totally mad. Ericsson in Germany tried to make Europe into something like Hitler’s “Dritte Reich” and “removed” people he found “unworthy”. Being brought up in a Facility he should have known better! Bernard just wanted more land, and I couldn’t see why, but I didn’t want another war, so I left it to the Chinese to decide for themselves. The threats, that were so very subtle, made them choose Bernard. Different places...in USA and Brazil, in Argentina, in Peru, in Mexico and in Canada humans began to rebel against their unjust rulers and it spread around the world. They got help from Australia, even if the Australians didn’t intervene directly, and gradually I had to give up countries, because I didn’t want to engage in armed conflicts. To make a long story short: We augments from the facility in the northern part of India, near Chadigarh, my original kinsmen.... we ended up near my palace in Shimla.....and had to make a decision: die or flee. We managed to finish the Botany Bay and the cryo-tubes and after having seen on the televisions what humans were doing to not alone the leaders but to the common augments too, we were sure that the best option was to flee. So unjust! We were all condemned in absentia and we had to make a decision. I didn’t conceal the fact that the opportunity was only a fraction better than death....but we hoped to be able to return when the “dust had settled” and we might be given a chance to defend ourselves. Again I proved my expectations to be too naive!”

Khan paused: “As I worked for Marcus I often hoped that we had not chosen to enter that ship, but had killed ourselves instead!”

T’wokk looked at him: “Thank you, Khan. I think we do know enough by now. Which brings us to the more present time..”

“I have a request” said Khan.

“Speak forward!”

Khan closed his eyes and then he spoke: “When I was in that other place, that other reality? Another dream? I know Dr McCoy has told you about it, there was this other version of a lot of you: another Spock, another Jim Kirk, another McCoy, another Scotty.....and another Alexander Marcus. The persons were sometimes close to the versions here: McCoy was a decent doctor, Scotty an excellent engineer. But there were huge differences in others. Jim Kirk and Spock were twisted and evil.....and Alexander Marcus was the most decent man in the Star Fleet Confederation. What I remembered from this reality, tainted my perception of this other Marcus.....It was so bad that I would start shaking, when I saw the mirror-Marcus. That was how much Marcus affected me!”

Khan paused, swallowed and closed his eyes: “I’m not easily scared....that would be a bad feature in a soldier. But what this Marcus in this Universe did to me and mine.....”

Khan looked at T’wokk: “I lost it.....he scared me so much. Drugged me with something, but it was not in the food. I was still drugged, even if I didn’t eat. Not in the water, I can go without water for a long time if necessary. Maybe in the air....or in the material I couldn’t help to touch. I was drugged most of the time, when I invented the proton torpedoes and the high-efficient fuel that I kept as a secret for Marcus and his scientists, the blue-prints for the SS Vengeance. I was still drugged, as I invented the personal trans-warp device...and the receivers. I sincerely do not hope that you thought that only one part was necessary. I was able to smuggle receivers to different places in different space-ships. When I had to escape as my attack on the Daystrom-room was partly prevented, I jumped more than I had ever tried before. I used the position of more than 10 receivers before I ended at Qo’noS. No something I can recommend. I had internal bleeding as I arrived. I had managed to make a secret base in that un-inhabited region of Qo’noS. That was why I had weapons to attack the Klingons with, as the crew from Enterprise arrived. Oh my, it was such a chance to take. It wasn’t until when I heard Sulu threaten me with the only existing proton-torpedoes, that I saw a tiny chance that maybe.....maybe...Marcus hadn’t been able to find my hidden crew. But I had been so drugged that it first was at Qo’noS that I actually didn’t feel the effects any more!”

“So...” Khan took a deep breath: “I have an eidetic memory. I can recall everything I have experienced in every little horrid detail. Remembering now what happened to me as a child and as a young man back in time has been very unpleasant. I found it increasing difficult to “put a lid” on those events. I had to meditate a lot yesterday, so I have no wish to recall in every detail.....to remember......and to put into words what Marcus did to me. So...”

Khan took another deep breath: “Even if it hurts like hell. Couldn’t you just perform a mind-meld with me and see what you have to see? I can shield my emotions so you don’t have to feel them, but just watch what happened. Would it be possible?”

T’wokk frowned and looked at Khan: “Why do you say “It hurts like....”... was the expression “hell”?! Have you...?” and he looked sternly at Spock, who actually turned a bit green as he flushed..”I...I..” he said and Khan came him to rescue: “Oh...no T’wokk. Spock had only tried to perform a mind-meld, as we both tried to kill each other almost 4 years ago!”

Now Spock looked actually embarrassed and said: “I’m sorry. And I have found it very difficult to forgive my self.....”

But Khan interrupted him: “I have said it so many times. I have forgiven you....we both made mistakes and you thought I had killed your friend and captain....it is all right!”

But T’wokk looked at Khan and said: “You never answered my question!”

Khan: “Oh....it was the other place....the other reality. That Spock there...he loved to mind-meld with me. Most of all because it caused so much pain. I felt it as if my brain was boiling....I suppose it was because he wasn’t very skilled. I managed to conceal a lot for him....”

T’wokk shook his head: “He must have been very unskilled. Mind-meld doesn’t hurt at all...even if it is invasive of nature. I suppose a skilled Vulcan would have been able to see through your “veils” and see the true you. I respect that you are willing to try despite your fear...”

“One more request, sir!”

“Yes?”

"The Vulcan who is supposed to perform the mind meld must be a Vulcan of a certain....how should I put it? Of a certain robustness. He must have seen a lot...evilness...because what he is going to see in my mind would be horrifying!” said Khan.

“In that case it should be me” said a voice....and everybody turned towards the speaker. It was Spock Prime: “I’ve done so much damage by my too hasty words about you, Khan, to my younger self. You are not at all like the Khan I knew.....and yet...seeing the files about you and your past has made me realise that I might have judged even “my” Khan to harshly! I’ll perform the mind-meld!”


	19. An explanation.....and a future?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I have put bits from TOS into this story.....but not totally according to canon. I’ve changed a bit here and there ___

Khan and Spock Prime were in the room next to the conference-room. Standing close to a duvet, a meditation mat.

Spock Prime could see that Khan tried to compose himself. Maybe the augment didn’t quite believe that it wouldn’t hurt, and it would be difficult enough for him to share his fear and defeat. As Khan had put it, Marcus had managed to make Khan, what was the expression? Oh yes...”loose it”. And Khan had mentioned that he had been drugged almost from the time Marcus had thawed him.

Spock Prime sat down on the duvet with a grace that showed that this old man, or rather “Vulcan” had done it a lot of times. To make it easier for Khan, they had dimmed the light and some incense had been lit too. Something from Earth could Spock Prime sense....the usual incense from Vulcan was a bit difficult to obtain!

Khan looked at Spock Prime and then he sat down too, gracefully. Spock Prime couldn’t help but admire the way Khan moved. Like one of the felines from Earth or one of the Le-Matyas from the original Vulcan.

Khan had immediately posed himself in the correct mind-meld position, that is: the correct one for a voluntary mind-meld of non-sexual nature.

“I can see you have experienced this before” said Spock Prime.

“I have, but not in this universe. I did in my “dream”!”

“I see.....I can assure you that I will be very gentle. Especially because you have only experienced an unskilled invasion, or experienced as a part of a fight.”

Khan nodded and closed his eyes. Spock Prime gently touched Khan’s face. It was only because Spock Prime was looking for it that he could see the faint flinch that Khan made.

  
“My mind to your mind....my soul to your soul” they both said softly...in Vulcan. Khan spoke it perfectly...and Spock Prime wondered when Khan had had time to pick that up.

 

Spock Prime was in Khan’s mind. He could feel that Khan was shielding his emotions for Spock Prime. The Spock Prime in Khan’s mind “said”: _“Don’t....I should be able to bear it.”_

 

The mental Khan formulated a _“No...it wouldn’t be wise. My emotions are strong and run deep.”_

 

Spock Prime continued never the less. Khan told him where to look in his mind. Looking into other people’s minds could be very different. In some people it was like a forest. Hidden things behind hidden things, like trees. In some people it was a landscape. Young Jim’s mind had been a landscape from Iowa. Apparently open, but a lot of things could be hidden in plain sight. Jim was so more complex than he appeared...so much more. And far more intelligent too.

Khan’s mental interior was a huge palace....and the surrounding landscape. A beautiful place, but with ominous parts too. Black spots in the landscape, where the sun didn’t shine. Darker parts in the palace too.

Spock Prime could “hear” Khan’s voice: _“Look in the dungeons under the palace...”_

And there is was: The Eugenic Wars, and their escape from Earth...and now Spock Prime was glad that Khan had partly shielded Spock Prime from his emotions.

  
Spock Prime moved on and found Khan’s memories from when Marcus had found him and thawed him. He felt Khan’s confusion.....and his fear as one of the first things Marcus did was to destroy one of the cryo-tubes....even before Khan had understood what it was Marcus wanted from him. Spock Prime saw and felt the fear, the anger and the rage...and he saw how Marcus defeated Khan, made him obedient, and he saw the rest of Khan’s ordeal....up till his escape from Marcus.

______________________________  
______

Spock Prime gasped and did let go of his touch on Khan’s face.

Khan looked at him with his brows knitted. “I managed to shield you, didn’t I?” he asked.

“Oh yes, quite skilfully actually, but...but what I’ve seen alters everything!”

“Am I in trouble?!” asked Khan.

“Oh...oh not. On the contrary, young man. On the contrary, but a lot of other people are!”

“I do not understand? And actually, I’m more than 300 years old, so “young man”!?”

Spock smiled at him: “Khan....I can’t tell you why right now. But will you trust me? I’ll have to contact some people, urgently, and you will have to go to McCoy and have a scan. Full body scan. Will you trust me and be able to wait for the explanation? You are most certainly not in trouble....but some other people are...and we’ll have to get our hands on them. The sooner the better!”

Khan just reached out his hand and touched Spock Prime’s hand....and felt nothing but honesty..

“Oh...my” whispered Spock Prime: “You have concealed that well, my young man....you are a touch-empath!!”

“I am, when I choose to” said Khan: “Go and do your errands. I’ll find McCoy!”  
____________________________

The first person Spock Prime found was T’wokk and as he told him about his discovery, and made a swift mind-meld with him to show, what he had seen in Khan’s mind, the whole building became a bee hive of buzzing activity: messages were sent towards Earth and the heads of the Galactic Council. A lot of actions were started.....and now they just have to wait for the scans of Khan’s body.

Joachim had asked for Khan and had been led to the room where Khan was waiting after the scan and had asked what was going on, and Khan could only tell him that Spock Prime apparently had found something so alarming, that it had started all this buzzing activity.

“You...we...are not in trouble?” had Joachim asked a bit worried, but also ready for fight, if that should be necessary.

“Not at all” had Khan answered. Now finally assured by the touch he had had on Spock Prime that everything was what it seemed to be. They were safe.....everybody was going to be thawed and they could live on this planet or leave if they wanted too. Finally they were free. But Khan wasn’t so sure about himself. He had after all killed more than 1500 people....in London, in the Daystrom-room, during the fight with the SS Enterprise... and the majority as the Vengeance crashed in San Francisco.

__________________________

While they were waiting for the next meeting, Khan decided to greet the awakened augments. They had been awake for almost 8 hours now and had read all the information on the Padd. Now they just wanted to see Khan and assure themselves that he was fine.

He asked them to forgive him, just as he had asked Joachim, but just like him they said that he didn’t need their forgiveness. He had done so much more than expected! He told them a bit more about this future....and he told them more about what he had done to save them. He asked them to tell that to the others the following days. The next 14 augments were already going through the initial thawing processes. They asked again if they could trust people.....and Khan assured them that they could.

And then they told him, that they didn’t like his new hairstyle and just as they were finished teasing him with his short hair, a servant turned up and said that they were ready in the conference room...and that the other ladies and gentlemen were welcome too!  
_______________________

As they were all seated T’wokk looked at Khan and said: “I’m sorry for having kept you waiting. And we are not going to prolong your waiting any further: you, Khan Noonien Singh are hereby declared a free man....a citizen of New Vulcan with all citizen rights and duties! In the folder in front of you, you’ll find the card. It is just symbolic, as you of course are registered in the central computer. You’ll find a crystal-chip with the information about your compensation, that will be available in a very few days...and until then you can draw as many credits, as you’ll find necessary. You’ll in the first place be shown suitable accommodations together with your people and everything else you might need. The replicators should be able to provide you with the most fundamental things! And the credits should be able to buy you some luxury.”

Khan fumbled with the folder in front of him and then he looked at T’wokk: “I can understand it has something to do with what Spock Prime saw in my mind.....but I would very much like an explanation, please!”

T’wokk looked at Spock Prime, who rose and sat down next to T’wokk: “It is going to take a while to explain. But wait...and all the answers would be given!”

Spock Prime cleared his throat and began: “It has something to do with my past as well. And something I feel guilty about. I didn’t feel guilt then, but meeting this Khan in this universe has made me realize, that I was to blame for some of the incidents then. So I’ll start there: On a travel with the SS Enterprise near Earth in our year 2267, we discovered a lost star–ship of pre-warp origin. In the ship we found several cryo-tubes....not at all as advanced as yours, Khan, and the ship hadn’t been invented by the ship’s captain, but stolen. On board were still 73 functioning cryo-tubes and we managed to manoeuvre the ship to the nearest Space Station. One cryo-tube began to fail before we came to the space station and we managed to thaw the man. He was incredibly strong, and charismatic...and he convinced us all, that he had no ill intentions. But it was a lie. He was Khan Noonien Singh.....and as soon as he had recovered, he had planned to outmanoeuvre us all and steal our ship. He got back in the Botany Bay and secretly he thawed his crew and did cut life-support to the bridge of the Enterprise. We had to surrender in the first place, but we managed to sedate his crew with anaesthetic gas. Khan escaped to the engineering area and tried to make the warp core overload, thus killing us all. There was a fight between Kirk...my Kirk...and Khan... and despite Khan’s strength, Kirk did hit him and managed to make him unconscious. Kirk didn’t want to hand Khan over to the Star Fleet Federation, because it would have meant imprisonment for God knows how many years, so he offered Khan an alternative: leaving them all on a habitable planet with enough means to cope. But no spaceships. We found Ceti Alpha V.....habitable but harsh. Khan agreed as he said the words: “It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven””

Spock Prime took a deep breath and continued: “And then Jim and I made the biggest mistake in our lives! A mistake of neglect and non-attendance: we never reported that Ceti Alpha V now contained living thinking beings. I thought Jim to have done so....and he thought me to have done so. But there is no excuse. We put them down there....and abandoned them!  
On that planet there was a complex eco-system. Most of the surface was a desert, but there were green forest-like areas nearer to the poles. The orbit gave something close to a Vulcan year...that is 407 days, and the whole system seemed stable enough. Other species had been there previously....most of all to collect a small animal from the desert, because inserted into another humanoid it would work as a truth-serum and make people extremely obedient.”

As Spock Prime said that Khan looked at him with a frown, but Spock Prime made a gesture to tell him to keep silent. Khan nodded.

Spock Prime continued: “That animal lived in a complex symbiosis with one of the larger animals in the forest...something close to a bear. The sand-creature had larvae that would crawl in through bodily openings of the bear-like animal and settle down for a while. Emitting drugs that would alter the behaviour of the host. A bit like those fungi, that attacks ants on Earth or the parasites that would put themselves in the antennas of the little sea-snail back on Vulcan, thus making the sea-birds eat the snail and make a cycles. The altered behaviour forced the “bear” out of the forest and into the dessert. But the co-existence had been going on for so long that the “bears” didn’t suffer. On the contrary.....such altered “bears” did mate more easily even if they got a bit thin because of the lack of enough plants in the desert.

Only 6 months after we had abandoned them on the planet, the whole system changed, the orbit was altered and nearly all life died...........including the “bears”. The augments survived because of their intelligence....and unfortunately the Ceti Eel, the sand-creature mentioned before, did survive too!”

When Spock Prime mentioned the Ceti Eel a shocked silence was palpable in the room. Almost everybody...except from the augments, knew what that little creature could do.  
When Spock Prime had mentioned the truth-serum, some of them had already got an idea of what that “sand-creature” was.

Spock Prime continued: “The young larvae...now missing their normal hosts, attacked the augments and Khan had to watch more than 20 of them die, tormented by the larvae in their brains. Not even their augmented biology could fight these little monsters! In the beginning it is not that bad....the drugs from the little beast only makes people obedient. But as it grows, it destroys brain-tissue and emits more and more drugs. And since humanoids are not the normal host, the larva is trapped. It can’t get out again, and the victim dies in great agony after having gone completely mad. Advanced medical procedures can sometimes remove the larvae...but only if they are small and there will always be brain-damage. Only at a few occasions has a larva left the host before it grew too big. Pavel Chekov from my universe was that lucky!”

Spock Prime took another deep breath and continued: “In 2285.....more than 17 years after we had condemned those people to that dying planet, another star ship, the SS Reliant, came by...and a visibly aged Khan managed to capture two of the crew-members, thus forcing the rest to give him access to their ship. He made a plan to lure us in the SS Enterprise to approach the nearest Space Station. He tortured the crew on board that station, killed some of them, when they couldn’t give him the answers, he wanted, left the crew of the Star ship and was if possessed with his wish for vengeance against Jim and I. He came in this ship, he had stolen and tried to kill everybody on the SS Enterprise. In the end he was so occupied with his wish for revenge that he, and the remaining augments...and unfortunately the remaining crew on the space station... were killed as a certain devise....the “genesis”, was engaged. It was supposed to Terra-form an otherwise hostile planet. The process would last more than two years. And in the beginning of the process it is extremely dangerous to be near that planet. We managed only by the utmost effort......and a sacrifice from me - this time it was I who was in that warp core chamber and died - to escape the nebula in which we had fought each other, before the devise was engaged!”

Khan looked at Spock Prime with confusion...as did actually the rest of the persons in the room.

“Excuse me” said Khan: “I’m a bit confused here. Didn’t you just say that you died?!”

Spock Prime nodded: “I did. But McCoy carried my katra, my soul, and my body was resuscitated as it landed on the Genesis planet. My dead body had been launched into space in a podd and by unbelievably luck it had been caught in the gravitational pull from that Genesis planet. And had landed on the surface with my dead body in it. After the first days of the devise working, it is not dangerous for life-forms to be on the planet. But I was just existing there....had no memory of who I was, until McCoy touched me. He didn’t know that he had been carrying my katra for 2 years, but it had been transferred in my moment of death, as he attended to my dying body after it had been retrieved from the core-chamber. The soul is a real thing.....it can be contained and moved. But only by skilled people. Apparently it was one of the other universe-McCoy’s hidden abilities....amongst the big number of his other abilities!”

Now Jim interrupted: “That Genesis planet...where did that come from?” Even if he had mind-melded with Spock Prime, he hadn’t “felt” that memory.

Spock Prime smiled at this young Jim and then he smiled at Khan: “You have figured that out, haven’t you, my young friend?”

Khan smiled back. Spock Prime insisted on calling Khan “young”....and maybe he was. Biological he wasn’t more than 28.

“The “genesis-devise" was made to alter Ceti Alpha V. After the alteration it was called “Genesis”. But why did you return to it afterwards. Two years later?"

“Some people had been stranded there. Some from the other spaceship. They were shielded in the containers, that had been given to the augments 18 years before, and it is not so dangerous to be on a planet when the devise works. I never understood why. But it took them two years to get into contact and tell someone that they would very much like to get off that planet. They had found me wandering around.....and the only reason why there still was “power” enough left to resuscitate me, was that I had landed in an area with a lot of rocks. It had apparently absorbed enough “genesis”-remnants to work on my body, but only slowly. It was the only time such a devise was used though. It was an experiment...and the side-effects were, besides giving me my life back, interesting. Things didn’t die easily on that planet, which made it difficult to maintain a functioning eco-system. When plants stay alive in the digestive tract and all the way through an organism, it is not easy to eat....and so on and so forth. It was not a success and there are warnings against approaching the planet now!”

Khan looked at Spock Prime: “I’m still confused....what has this to do with me?”

Spock Prime answered: “It has everything to do with you. As I said: The larvae from the Ceti Eel can, inserted in a humanoid, serve as a truth serum and makes the victim very obedient!”

And Khan understood now: “Marcus infected me with that larva!”

“Indeed, and it is so illegal! Let me explain. All the races in our two quadrants....at least the races we know about and those who are members of the Galactic Council, or those who are our enemies! Eeverybody....even the Orion slave-trades, who normally wouldn’t hesitate to kill people, abduct children or use behaviour-modification means, such as electronic slave-collars or drugs or whatever can make an obedient slave, they have death sentences if someone uses a Ceti Eel. A rather severe death-sentence. I have only heard about two occasions....but in both cases it took the men more than 100 days to die.....one cut after another. There were removed dispensable body-parts from them every day, until they died!”

Spock Prime continued: “Every race in the Galactic Council has agreed on a law against the Ceti Eel. And if anyone should dare using it, they are facing a death-sentence. As are they who knew about that use and didn’t report it!”

Khan looked at Spock Prime and then at T’wokk: “You wanted to apprehend those of Marcus’ men, who knew about it!”

T’wokk answered: “Exactly, and we did. They are now in jail on Earth, waiting for their trial! If they just had reported it, you could have been saved for the whole ordeal. That you were infected with the Eel has changed everything. You could have blown Earth to pieces, and you wouldn’t have been accused of anything. Humanoids infected with the eel are protected. They can’t be accused of anything....anything at all. And that is why this hearing does not have to continue. What you have told until now and what we have found out, would have made the same outcome anyway.”

“Not that I would object” said Khan, “but how can the people on Earth forgive me, that I killed more than 1500 people?”

Now it was Jim who rose and said: “Even without the Ceti Eel....and even if I had to witness that you shot my mentor, and for what I gave you quite a, I must say, very unjust trashing on Qo’noS, your actions can be excused. You blew up the archive in London. But we have found evidence that you mostly attacked personnel in the “Section 31”....personnel who knew about the torture of you and your people. They could have reported that. You didn’t kill civilians. There were only wounded civilians and not severely. In the Daystrom-room you only attacked people in admiral-uniforms. I suppose you thought, they were all in on it with Marcus. You thought you killed monsters...you thought they all were like Marcus!”

Khan began to say something but Jim stopped him with a gesture: “Please, Khan...let me continue. Just like Spock Prime, and “my” Spock, we have had to look at our own actions...and try to see them in the light of our later discoveries, not that about the eel though, and we have to admit that it altered a lot. That what we found in the ruins...and on the net. You had seen nothing but cruelty...severe cruelty....from humans since your early childhood. You must have thought you killed monsters! That you even considered that we could be trusted....it is in fact amazing! And yet we did nothing but betray that trust!”

Jim took a deep breath: “You even saved my life during that insane space-jump. You didn’t have to. You didn’t need me. And when our ship’s fought, you didn’t aim for the most vulnerable parts. I thought it was because you didn’t know, but you did, to the millimetre! And when you crashed, it was because of the torpedoes the Vengeance was so destroyed, and yet you stayed on board.....even if there were rescue-capsules on board....why, Khan?”

Khan looked at Jim: “I couldn’t risk that it plunged somewhere else in the city...And I wanted to destroy the Star Fleet Command with the crashing ship!”

“Bullshit”, said Jim: “You could have escaped in a capsule, and have made bombs later if you wanted to blow the headquarters to pieces....No...you wanted to minimize the civilian casualties. Or else you could have ejected the warp core over San Francisco. It would most certainly have wiped the Star Fleet Command off the face of the Earth, together with the whole city!”

“No!” almost shouted Khan: “My revenge was at the Star Fleet....oh my God. Did you want me to eliminate more than one million people?! I only wanted to destroy the organisation, that had abused me and mine, and, I have to admit, I would commit suicide. I didn’t want to be the last one alive! Didn’t want to risk being a lab-rat again.”

Jim turned towards the rest of the people in the room: “Do you see?!” And he turned towards Khan again: “No matter how hard you try. You were not the monster...it was us!”

And Khan bowed his head, Jim was right. He didn’t have to pretend being a cold-hearted monster any more. His people were safe!

Spock Prime cleared his throat: “Khan...am I allowed to tell the rest in this room what Marcus did to you....what the eel did to you and why I wanted McCoy to make a scan?”

Khan looked up, and nodded: “Yes...you are allowed!”

And Khan remembered as he could hear Spock Prime tell what happened:

_He had been awakened in a wrong way. His body was struggling to heal itself after all the damage the thawing had done. Khan found himself in a bio-bed in a locked room. And he could see that he was on a space-station. The door opened and a man dressed in a uniform came in...._

Spock Primes voice: “Admiral Marcus had decided to thaw the man from the ship....a man he knew was “Khan Noonien Sing”...the augmented military genius who somehow actually still belonged as a sort of slave to the Star Fleet since it had “grown” from the remnants of the Facilities back in the 20th century on Earth. Admiral Marcus wasn’t a patient man, and he wanted to be the one, who started the war against the Klingons. He didn’t want for them to start, but would have the advantage of making the first attack. He didn’t realise that Khan was wounded, confused and read Khan’s reluctance as insubordination. And even more so as Khan came more to his senses. Marcus decided to use one of the cryo-tubes as a mean of pressure......"

_Khan had been shackled, he was still too weak to get out of them and was too disoriented to try. Didn’t understand what happened. Was still healing and had only been conscious about half an hour as he was pushed into a room where Marcus deliberately crushed the panel on one of the cryo-tubes, just to let Khan watch the man inside die. Marcus had not threatened to do that to the other cryo-tubes, because Khan could have accepted their death, but Marcus threatened to thaw them and use them as lab-rats! Oh my god....where from did Marcus have that information!? Khan was kneeling on the floor at that time.....and then he was hurled onto a medical steel table, shackled and his head was put into a wrench. The doctors did something to his ear....a searing pain that continued for a while....almost unbearable.....and then..... blackness!_

Spock Primes voice: “Marcus’ doctors, even if I would hesitate to call them that! They broke the Hippocratic oath in so many ways, that they do not deserve that title! They inserted a Ceti Eel larva into Khan’s left ear. It perforated the eardrum and crawled along the acoustic nerve to the brain, where it settled down in the cerebral cortex. There it created a capsule around itself for protection and began to emit drugs to affect the host. In humanoids it makes them extremely obedient and as the larva grows it gives an almost unbearable headache, creates hallucinations and sensory disorder. It must really have surprised Marcus that Khan still was able to resist obeying him.”

_Khan remembered that he was shown into another room and forced down into a chair and there he watched how two more of his people slowly were tortured to death. The “doctors” kept removing organs and limbs from them until they finally after 24 hours of torture was so enervated because of the lack of water and food to heal from, that they were nothing but skin and bones. Marcus had then allowed Khan to kill them. At that time Khan didn’t even care that he showed how augments could be killed....by decapitation. The larva in his brain was doing its job neatly. Khan found it increasingly difficult not to obey Marcus. Even more so as they returned to Earth and he ended up in “Section 31” in London. And despite that, he still managed to learn incredible fast and make inventions, that Marcus and his men didn’t discover: the high-efficient fuel for the torpedoes....leaving enough room for the cryo-tubes in the torpedoes and the personal trans-warp-devise and the receivers, that he even managed to smuggle out in different star-ships. And he managed to kill the augmented frozen children. At the same time he did make the blueprints for the Vengeance and the proton-torpedoes.....and all that as he was hallucinating and was in pain. The worst part was that Marcus, after Khan had finished these inventions, now saw a possibility of having his own personal sex-slave and Khan had felt so ashamed of what Marcus had made him do!_

Spock Primes continued to tell as Khan was absorbed in his own memories: “After Khan had finished making those inventions: the battle-ship Vengeance, the proton-torpedoes and other advanced weaponry, Marcus decided to use Khan for his own personal use...as a sex-slave and later just as a lab-rat. And that as Khan’s condition rapidly deteriorated. The larva inside his brain was trapped and emitted more and more drugs as his immune-system and nano-robots attacked the capsule. Finally Khan snapped and became totally insane. He was in a cell and on the monitoring screens the guards could see how he disappeared into insanity: he saw bugs crawling under his skin and literally ripped his own skin off to get rid of them. He ate his own excrements and smeared them all over his bleeding body and the walls in his cell.....and then they didn’t want to watch any more. They expected him to be dead in the morning...”

_Khan remembered how he had come to his senses. The air thick with the stench of blood and excrements. But finally the pain in his brain was gone. He was still not sure about what his senses told him. If it was the truth or not, but right now he felt less drugged. He carefully still pretended to be insane, as he couldn’t be sure they were not watching any more, but as he continued to throw excrements around and scream...he carefully aimed at the cameras hoping to cover the lenses. Then he removed the soiled linen from the bed. Laid down and waited for his body to heal._

Spock Prime explained more: “Khan managed to escape later that morning. The guards had lowered their surveillance and had expected to find a dead Khan. Their surprise must have been big as they turned the bundle in the corner around, expecting to see a dead Khan just to discover the soiled linen. Khan had crawled up through the ventilation-shaft, using his own blood as a lubricant. Khan had disappeared out into London and had managed not alone to find Harwood and persuade him to detonate a bomb, but had managed to make a secret base on Qo’noS.....And all that still with that larva inside his brain. His last attack of insanity had been the last effort from the larva to survive, as his nano-robots and immune-system finally defeated and killed the larva. He should now only metabolize the remnants and rebuild the destroyed brain-tissue and get the drugs out of his system....”

Khan looked up.....again mentally present in the conference-room: “The last remnants of the drugs and the brain-damage was still present on Qo’noS as the crew of the Enterprise apprehended me. I can only say, that I think I had totally recovered just before I crashed with the Vengeance.”

And now McCoy spoke: “And the scans now show nothing abnormal. There are no remnants what so ever left. Not even the capsule....and that is a god damned miracle!!!”

Now it was T’wokk's turn to speak: “And that is why any accusation towards you, Khan, have been declared null and void.....and would have been even if the eel hadn’t been there. I’m sorry that we didn’t have time to celebrate this better, but there is a meal prepared for everybody in the next room. To celebrate the freedom for Khan Noonien Singh.....welcome to our new citizen!”

“Oh...I have one more thing, T’wokk” said Khan.

“Speak forward!”

“Before you accuse and condemn Marcus’ followers, I think you ought to consider, that I might not be the only one, who witnessed my kin being tortured. You can’t blame people for not saying anything if they are too scared. Marcus had that effect on people!"

T’wokk nodded: “We’ll take that into consideration.....and might consider using a soothsayer to ensure justice.”

Khan smiled and turned around and went into the next room. To him the meal could just have been water and bread......it would still have tasted excellent. The first meal in freedom in more than 300 years!


	20. Beer, bread and.... an apron?

A year had passed:

McCoy came up the slope towards Khan’s house on New Vulcan. He saw Khan sitting outside the house. Eyes closed and his face turned up against the sun. He was dressed in an ancient looking Indian dress, a “Shervani” in burgundy silk and white tight trousers, churidas. His hair had grown long again and was assembled in a low ponytail. He looked regal.....ever so much like an Indian prince, despite his paleness.

As McCoy approached Khan smiled and said: “Greetings, McCoy...Bones!”

And McCoy just looked at him and said: “How did you know without opening your eyes?!”

“Your scent!”

“Are you saying that I smell bad?!”

“No, not your “smell”. Your “scent”. it is different. Your scent is....the disinfectant you use in the clinics, your aftershave and the whisky you believe we do not notice that you drink.....and something unique for you, your scent.The McCoy-scent!”

McCoy growled: “Did those bastards put damned dog-genes in you too?!”

Khan opened his eyes and made a gesture towards a table with tea cups and a tea-pot: “Sit down, please. Tea?. And no, I don’t think so. I can’t smell peoples footsteps! I actually think we do not understand how a dog “sees” the world, or other species that are not humanoids. It is even difficult to understand the Gorns...or for that case even the Vulcans, when they are the most “Vulcanny”!”

McCoy smiled back. He knew exactly what Khan meant! When Spock, who even was a hybrid, was in that mood, both he and Jim and the other officers could scream of frustration.

McCoy began to snicker....

“What?” asked Khan.

“I think there must have been donkey-genes involved when they made the Vulcans.....Spock is the most stubborn man I’ve ever met!”

“No...” said Khan: “The most stubborn man ever ...that is Jim!”

“Agreed!”

 

They sat for a while enjoying the warmth from the sun. It wasn’t too hot but pleasant.

“I hear that you have been busy” said McCoy, “finding hidden water resources her on New Vulcan.....and finding out where the ancient Vulcans went, those “Space Gypsies!”

(The Space Gypsies were the Vulcans, who fled because they didn’t want to follow “The way of Surak”, the means of controlling the rather violent temper, that had almost ruined the Vulcan society. No one had known anything about them since they fled almost 8000 years ago.....and now the remaining Vulcans would like to find them)

“Hmm” said Khan: “ Yes, the Space Gypsies. They could have been found a bit before, if the knowledge about genetics hadn’t been banned. When human scientist did know about genetics, they didn’t know about Vulcans....and when they knew about Vulcans, they didn’t know about genetics!”

“But who would have had the thought to search for them on Earth, if it hadn’t been for you!” said McCoy.

“Well” answered Khan: “I have always wondered where from the scientist got our genes. Some of them must have come from brilliant and skilled humans.....but I didn’t believe that the genes that make me shit in neat little packages, just like Vulcans, did come from birds....so where-from?”

“But who would have thought that the lost Vulcans did choose Earth?! I would actually have thought that they would have left a greater impact...that somehow we would have seen that they had been there” said McCoy.

“But they have, McCoy. The population in Asia, especially China and Japan, and Korea. Look at their culture. Look at their writing. They did meditate. And some inventions came...despite my praise for the human ingenuity....surprisingly early: the black powder, the paper, the kites. And just look at the majority of Vulcans now....imagine them on Earth then. Hybrids like Spock. We always thought the description of the Asians from Alexander The Great...you know the Greek general, who’s soldiers ended up close to China’s border....and from Marco Polo, were inaccurate: the black slick hair, slanted eyes and yellow skin. But hybrids do get slanted eyes...and eyebrows, black slick hair and ad some more haemoglobin into Spock and his skin-tone would turn more yellow! And now I have just found the genetic proof. It wasn’t that difficult. That is by the way why Spock’s mother fitted so nicely into the Vulcan society. Spock is not a 50/50 hybrid but a 65/35. His mother had quite a lot of Vulcan genes, so only 35% of Spock is human” and Khan smirked: “After all....I’m the best geneticist on this planet!”

McCoy shook his head and smiled back: “Amongst “the best....in whatever” in a lot of other areas. Including tea-brewer. It is good!”

Khan smiled: “Home-made, in every sense! First harvest....and fermentation... from the plants on the new irrigated fields.”

“Excellent...but how did you get the tea plants? I think I’ve only tasted this sort of tea once before...and it was before Vulcan was destroyed. It is the original Vulcan tea, right?”

“It is. Fortunately we found plants in arboretums on different planets. They were very willing to give us sprouts.....and by meristem-reproduction, you know...from single plant-cells.... we here managed to make quite a few plants....and then we just have to make them grow in the new fields, take the leaves and remember how to ferment the leaves the right way.....and make tea!”

“It is excellent....just as good as I remembered to be.”

“Enjoy it....right now it is worth its weight in gold. No... in deuterium, I think. We’ll have to raise the production as soon as possible!”

McCoy closed his eyes as ordered and did enjoy the rich flavour as he emptied his cup.

Then he put it aside at said: “The hidden water?”

“Well” Khan explained: “It wasn’t so difficult to discover....I being a geologist. I had had a suspicion for a while. The air was too moist. I looked at some satellite-photos and found something similar to landscapes on Earth. Karst-landscapes....with lime-stone, which by the way indicate that there has been a lot of water here on New Vulcan. And the planet is too big to have lost the water just like Mars did...by evaporation into space. So, knowing about the lime-stone and how it reacts to just a fraction of acid from sulphur from erupting volcanoes,  well then there would be a chance that the water was just running in cave systems below the surface. And it did! I and Joaquin made an expedition and found those caves...and the water. It is there, just 1 km below the surface. Easy to reach with drills and pumps. And then we just had to make pipelines and aqueducts....like the Romans, and we have water enough for irrigation. And I’m glad I was together with Joaquin. He is the strongest amongst us....even stronger than me....and it saved my life at a few occasions when we were down in those caves!”

“So much for “I’m better at ....everything”!

“Well, I bragged a bit. You can find humans and augments that excel in areas, where I would not be the best: Joaquin is stronger than me, you are a better doctor, Jim is a better captain, Spock can calculate a fraction faster than I can and....”

“But” interrupted McCoy: “You are the only one were so many talents are put together, I know. It is just sometimes so frustrating that you excel in so many areas! Even in making tea!”

Khan just shrugged his shoulders: “It isn’t of my own credit....I was made that way.”

“Nonsense! You were given your good head, your intelligence and your ability to learn, but the rest is on you.....even your ability to forgive us humans all the wrongdoings against your people and especially you! I can only admire you...and I do!”

Khan smiled: “Thank you.....we have travelled a long and tedious road together, haven’t we? But don’t diminish your own intelligence. Only a medical genius would have made that connection between the tribble, my blood and a cure for Jim......and you saved my life that way. If it hadn’t been for Uhura stopping Spock, he would have killed me on that transporter.”

“Well, I would never have thought of it that way. I actually feel, that I just added to the abuse, that you had experienced. And I’m truly sorry for that!”

“You, Jim, Spock....in fact a lot of the officers of the SS Enterprise, and Spock Prime and Sarek, you have so much made up for the harm you did to me and mine...so I think the slate is cleaned by now!”

 

The two men sat and drank the last tea and as the sun grew more and more warm they finally went into the house.

“I like your house. It looks like something from ancient science fiction movies...the 'Star Wars' movies. It looks like the buildings on Tatooine!”

Khan smiled: “Well...I think it is because the fictive planet, and I have seen “Star Wars”, was a desert planet, and the actual houses, they used for the film, were inspired from Tunisian buildings. It is practical to have houses partly underground, when it is hot outside.”

Khan led McCoy out into the kitchen and showed him a place at the large kitchen table. Then he went into the cooling room and came back with a ceramic jar and two glasses.  
“Beer?” he asked gesturing with the jar.

“Oh yes...thank you!”

And Khan put down the glasses and the jar and a bowl of salty crackers. He pointed at them and said: “Freshly baked....and from our own wheat.”

They drank the beer and McCoy closed his eyes...it was perfect...a hint of bitterness and very refreshing.

“Mmm” he said as he put the glass down: “Excellent!!”

Khan smirked: “I’m glad you liked it. Like the tea it is 100 % home-made: the barley....grown on our fields. In fact we began to grow barley for the same reason humans began to grow grain back then...to make beer! The hops are from our gardens too and this is actually our second attempt. The first one didn’t turn out quite so well....drinkable, but nothing more!”

“So...you are a brewer too?”

“And a farmer, a farmer of livestock, a planter, a fruit grower, a baker and a cook and a lot more!”

McCoy smiled: “I better buy you an apron then!”

But Khan didn’t smile back. In fact he looked offended and his eyes were almost blazing with anger: “You are mocking me! But let me tell you this, Doctor McCoy. Without peasants and farmers your replicators would have nothing to replicate! The only thing that can make edible things out of sunlight, co2 and water are the chloroplasts from plants...and from a very few animals. We have even stolen the chloroplasts from the plants when we need them in our green-factories on space ships! And if humans hadn’t learnt to cook, we would still be sitting around camp fires making tools out of stone, just like the Homo Habilis! Without prepared food we would still have big teeth and heavy jaws....and that would not leave room for bigger brains. Without the art of cooking we would be as stupid as apes!!”

McCoy just looked a Khan and felt ashamed: “I..I’m sorry. It was very inappropriate of me. Forgive me. It is just.....You were a ruler of one third of the world. You invented the most amazing ship and proton-torpedoes....and your were cold and calculating and scared the hell out of us all.....and now you serve home-grown tea of fine china and serve home-made crackers and beer...it is just such a contrast!”

“Hmmm” Khan smiled back, his anger was gone almost as fast as it had emerged: “...Well, when you put it like that. Yes it is a contrast....and yet not. It has to do with survival.”

“Yeah....you are right...and again my deepest apology. I didn’t intend to offend you or diminish your efforts!”

“Accepted!”

The two men sat for a while and drank their beer and then Khan rose and said: “I’ve made a surprise for Spock when he and Jim arrive this evening, together with the rest of the “support-group” for well...Should we call it ”Free-the-augments”?. Well I’ve made a surprise for each one of you....but I intend to show you Spock’s surprise!”

And he went out in the storage-room again and came back with a bowl covered with a lid.

“What is it?” asked McCoy curiously.

“Plomeek soup” was the answer.

“Oh my god. I’ve tasted it once! It was.....not good! Scotty has served me the Scottish version of “strange-food-we’ll-serve-to-our-friends-to-see-if-they-vommit”, the haggish, but it was nothing compared to Spock’s attempt to poison us all! "Sour socks mixed with vinegar and the contents of a kitchen sewer"....I recall it was Scotty’s description of it!”

“Yeah...it is an assault of human taste-buds....and I think I taste it like you do. Scotty’s description is spot on! And that is strange....because the plomeek-plant itself doesn’t taste that bad!”

And with those words Khan fetched 2 more bowls:  
“The first is just the Plomeek-plant.....we grow it here on New Vulcan too, the second is the traditional Plomeek-soup, the third...” and here Khan made a gesture towards the first bowl: “is my attempt to make it all right for our taste–buds too. I’ve made spectral-analyses to find where those flavours “clashed”...and I think I’ve found the explanation. You know, sometimes it is a question of what you are used to. If I served you some of my child-hood’s favourite curry-dishes from my little mountain-village, you would accuse me of trying to put your mouth on fire....and the Swedish people still enjoy their almost rotten and fermented fish.... the “surstrøming” and the Danes still eat their “øllebrød”, their old-rye-bread-dissolved-in water-and-beer. And some foods go excellent together in a way no-one would have expected: banana and parsley, chocolate and cauliflower, pineapple and basil......so with that in mind, I tried to alter the recipe. I dare you!” and then he gave McCoy a spoon.

McCoy took the challenge and tasted the first bowl first...it wasn’t bad. A taste of...green....and a bit spicy.

“It’s OK” he said.

Then he tasted the original plomeek-soup......and shuddered: “I think you have altered the recipe. Besides the kitchen sewer and the sour socks...and the vinegar...I think there is a trace of....rotting rodent!”

“Flush your mouth with some beer and give the last bowl a try!”

And McCoy very carefully tasted: “Mm...not bad...what have you altered? Besides getting rid of the rotten rodent, the taste of rotting soap and the butyric acid from the sour socks?”

Khan smiled: “Well actually I’ve just altered one other plant and two spices. To my best knowledge it would taste like the original Plomeek-soup for Vulcan taste-buds.....and it is not assaulting ours any more!”

McCoy just smiled: “And you, by this noble act, have saved human generations in the time to come out in the far future, from having to endure the original plomeek-soup at receptions on New Vulcan. I suppose you are going to ban the original recipe?”

Khan smiled back: “I do not have the power to do so....but I hope the government will run their eyes over this my humble attempt to avoid diplomatic incidents with Tellurians!”

 

The two men smiled at each other and Khan put the bowls back in the storage room again.

“Would you like to see my house...a guided tour?” he asked as he came back.

“Yes please. You said that the others would show up later this evening?”

“Yeah...Jim and Spock had some errands to do, so I figured that we could meet around supper-time. So we have plenty of time!”


	21. Sandstorm

It turned out that the house was much bigger than it had appeared by the first glance. A lot of it was actually underground. McCoy couldn’t help but notice, that there were shutters being able to cover every opening and as Khan showed McCoy his garden, that was in a cavity, to protect it against the harsh sun....McCoy noticed that it could be totally shuttered off against the surrounding landscape.

He pointed at the shutters and just said: “Why?”

Khan answered just as short: “Sandstorms!”

“Oh.....and you insist to keep a part of this planet as a desert despite the dangers for the crops...and people?”

“We’ll have to keep parts as desert. The plants and the animals were here before us!”

McCoy smiled: “And to eliminate the weak and unworthy?”

Khan smiled back....oh yes. He could remember that book: “Dune”...written by Frank Herbert.

He said: “Yes, this planet is harsh enough to eliminate the weak....and we have sand-worms. But no Shai-huluds, no “melange”, no “sand-trouts”. We are not “fremens” and we don’t use “still-suits”. But we have water-traps....and by the way ornithopters too!”

McCoy smiled: “It was a fantastic book, and as usual it turned out to be horrible films!”

Khan smiled back: “Well that is normal, isn’t it? In my time, back 300 years ago, I can only remember a few exceptions: Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit-movies.....and James Bond! Oh...and the Marvel films. Most of them.”

McCoy smiled: “Yeah. They are classics. But there a few exceptions even now. Even if it is easier now to get actors to play.They are all computer-generated....but from living persons. No one can earn a living from being a film-actor now, only on theatres.”

They smiled at each other.

“Are you hungry?” asked Khan: “it could be time for lunch...”

“Yes, thank you” was the answer.

  
_________________________

After lunch Khan showed McCoy the ‘thopter....and asked him he wanted to see the fields and maybe a bit of the desert, as it right now wasn’t time yet for sandstorms.

And that was why they found themselves in the 4 persons ‘thopter over the irrigated fields. And Khan was very busy telling and showing everything.

McCoy frowned a bit as he saw something in the horizon.....mountains?

He pointed at them and asked Khan what it was...and Khan cursed: “Blast it, It is out of season...and much too early. Damn it! It’s a sandstorm, and we are too far out in the desert to be able to reach home before it arrives!”

Khan took the radio and called: “It’s Khan...”

“Of course” thought McCoy: “Everybody knows who he is. He doesn’t need to say more than that!” and then he could of course only hear Khan’s answers:

  
”There is a sandstorm coming. My best estimate is that it is a 5. Direction is, wait a minute.....everything from section K and down. Yeah I know....but the tea-plants are the most important. We can import the rest.......About half an hour is my best estimate. No....the bonus is for Dr. Leonard McCoy from SS Enterprise! Yeah....he saw it first....no we are going to take shelter.....yeah.....Oh...ask someone to seal my home, please. I left it open....yeah....out of season....Khan out!”

“Bonus? And “shelter”?” asked McCoy.

“Yeah, bonus to the one who reports a sandstorm so early that crops can be saved....and houses. An even bigger one because it is out of season!”

“Oh....and "shelter"?

“We have bought old space-ships and stripped them, building shelters a lot of places in the desert. More than 500 by now. We are going to land rather close to the storm....so as soon we hit the ground, you run for the door. You are in greater danger than I am.....and I’m sorry!”

“Khan....it is out of season, as you said. How should you have known?”

_______________________

The sandstorm was far too close for McCoy’s liking as they found the cliffs and Khan put the ‘thopter on the ground.

“Run” had Khan said and McCoy ran through the first tendrils of sand. He could feel it between his teeth and he found the door and opened it. Khan dragged the ‘thopter in the “garage”...and effort a normal human could not have done and the doors were closed.....and they couldn’t hear the storm any more.

“Well. Welcome to shelter 27. One of the first we did build when we found out it would be a god idea. Let me show you around!”


	22. Wounded

McCoy had to admit, that he was impressed. The idea itself.....and then the way the stripped space-ships had been used. And it had all been done in about less than a year. It had been an idea that the augments had brought up and the Vulcan/human government of New Vulcan had seen the potential.

Khan had explained that the miners, who had been on this planet many years, had experienced several sandstorms. Some of them so fierce, that people who had been exposed to it without any shelter, had been found dead.....and often so wind-blown that only the bones were left at least in the wind side, where they had been exposed directly to the storm. If people had come from desert planets, they would know how to survive......but even the experienced would sometimes not survive. There were of course natural caves in the cliffs scattered around in the desert-area, but they were not always sufficient enough and then the augments had suggested to buy small space-ships and strip their contents and build more safe “caves” in the cliffs.

The shelter no 27 consisted of two big rooms and several small ones. All in all there would be room for 50 people and even more if they went through some doors and entered a raw cave. With no panelling on the walls but room for 50 more people. All the normal rooms were carved out of the rock and lined with the hull from the “slaughtered” spaceships. Almost every part from such a ship was used and the result was a secure and comfortable place to stay. There were replicators.....and even stored food. Several tanks for the material used in the replicators and the recycle system from the ships too. A well had been dug....and Khan explained that there were even animals to be found in the desert.....animals eatable for most humanoids.

And suddenly McCoy understood: “They are not just for sandstorms, are they?”

Khan smiled: “No. You do realise that the Klingon Empire and the Romulans are less than 2 days away at warp 4? And yes, we cannot stop thinking as warriors...as soldiers. So you are right. This is our secret weapon should the Klingons or the Romulans get this excellent idea, that this earlier so dry and uninteresting planet now is fertile enough to be interesting. And I and Joaquin found more than just water in those caves. In some of the big underground lakes the content of deuterium in the water is abnormal high. There were useful and rare metals in the rocks down there too. So we are no longer an uninteresting, poor, dry, desert-planet, but one of the richest in the Federation.”

He made a gesture that included the whole complex: “That is why we, humans, augments and Vulcans, all us “New Vulcans” have been busy building all those shelters, and still are building them. We would disappear out in the desert, yet another reason to preserve large areas as desert, and can fight every intruder from here. You comparison with Arrakis wasn’t that far out. This is our “Sietch”s.....We would be “Fremens”. Well we are even working at making Still-suits......better than those described in “Dune””

  
Khan smiled: “Frank Herbert’s description would have made a suit, that would have killed people after 2 hours exposure to the sun, they would have been boiled!”

________________________

They sat down on one of the couches and Khan explained more about his and the other augments ideas....and thank god the government had been very attentive to their ideas.

  
“How long is the storm going to last?” asked McCoy after they had shared a meal, made by one of the replicators.

“My guess was 2-3 hours.....but now I’m not sure. The sound is different”.....and of course should McCoy have known that Khan was still able to hear the storm.

“It has grown bigger then?”

“Yes. I think so. But your eyes and awareness gave people enough time to make preparations, so your bonus would be rather big. It is 1% of values saved, and since it were the fields with the tea-bushes, we are talking about, and since the storm was out of season and not discovered by the satellites, you are now a rich man, McCoy.....several thousand credits!”

“Oh” said McCoy. Well he wouldn’t complain. As things were and were going to be, he could use more money. Not that his salary from the Star Fleet wasn’t sufficient....especially because he didn’t use so much money when they were on missions, but the pause and the forced leave because of the renovation of the SS Enterprise before they would try....yet another round...to embark on a five-year-mission, had made a significant draw on his accounts. And as things were going to be, it would be nice to have a bit more money.

Khan cursed.....and McCoy could hear a loud banging and the howl from the sandstorm.

Khan jumped to his feet and ordered McCoy to stay....and before Khan went out the door, he turned around and said: “If.....if I do not return, you can call via the radio later....when the static disturbances from the storm have gone. We can’t communicate during a storm because of the disturbances...another thing Frank Herbert anticipated. He was a very inventive author!” and with those words Khan opened the door and disappeared. Somehow there must be a gate opened or a door destroyed, because the howl of the storm was roaring and sand was flying around through the door opening.

________________________

Only 10 minutes later McCoy couldn’t hear the storm any more and Khan came back...or rather he stumbled back, covered in blood and sand. His clothes were torn to pieces and he was bleeding.....and McCoy couldn’t help but gasp as Khan turned his back to him to bolt the door.

 

Khan’s back and buttocks were raw bleeding flesh. The clothes almost gone....and Khan’s skin too. And there were...”things”......sticking out of his back too. Metal pieces?!

 

McCoy helped Khan to lie down on one of the beds face down and went to fetch towels, water and a medical kit he had spotted as he had been shown around.

“There is no need for that” said Khan: “I’ll be healed before the storm is over anyway...I think...”

“Yeah....you probably would. With about several hundred of thousands grains of sand stuck under your healed skin and those.....metal debris.....sticking out too. Making it a bit difficult for you to sit for a while as your nano-robots would do overtime getting rid of it, and you in a lot of pain because those grains would be forced our through your skin.....yeah....you would be all right I think. Goddamnit, Khan. You can’t see your own back!! Just let me take care of you!”

And McCoy had found a mirror and held it so Khan could see his own back.

“Oh...a bit worse than I initially thought” Khan admitted.

“If you had been a normal human, your life would be in danger now” explained McCoy: “your whole backside has been...well “sanded” would be the right word and I’m sorry. But I have not enough sedation and I’ll have to scrub the sand out of your bleeding flesh...and remove the metal pieces without sedation too. I’ll have to suture you too, some places....and don’t give me the “leave it alone, it’ll heal”, because the wounds would be gaping, and your healing abilities would have to create spongy fibrous-tissue to fill the gaps, and will have to use time later to make it into decent tissue again. So...just to spare the time....sutures! But first, you’ll have to move to one of the tables. I can’t work like this...scrunched over your body on a bed that is too low. So up you go!”

And McCoy pointed at a table where he had already put a mattress and a sheet.

Khan was supported as he left the bed and walked towards the table. Khan murmured: “I’m sorry...”

And McCoy answered: “You have nothing to be sorry about! You are just as allowed to treatment as everyone else. This is not some obscure test from the monsters from your childhood or from Marcus’ insane and sadistic doctors”....McCoy almost spat out the last word: “And if you hadn’t been augmented, you would have been close to death now....so just shut up and let me take care of you!”

“Well, then give me something to bite into, please...and just continue even if I moan!”

And McCoy washed the sand out of the wounds, changing the water several times...and removed the metal pieces.

 

”What are they?” he asked.

Khan removed the piece of cloth he was biting into, and McCoy could see that Khan was in pain. His body was covered in a thin layer of sweat...and his breath was faster. But McCoy could hear that Khan was using a special technique to ease his pain: a fast inhale through his nose and a slow exhale through his mouth.

Khan answered: “Hmm, I think they are the remains of the “garage”-door. I noticed it was not closing the right way and someone forgot to report that! It wouldn’t have been a problem if the storm hadn’t been that strong ...or if it hadn’t been directly aimed at the door. But now it was and it destroyed the door. That was the banging we heard. And then I had to make a makeshift-door by going outside and fetch the rest of the door and drag the ‘thopter further back in the garage. It was a bit difficult...but I managed!”

McCoy had stopped his washing and listened in awe to Khan’s words.

“You dragged the ‘thopter back further into the garage, while you were that wounded?!?”

“Yeah...that is why it was a bit difficult!” was Khan’s answer.

McCoy just shook his head and continued and was looking in the bowl he was holding in his hands. There were a lot of blood and sand....and tissue...

  
He looked at Khan again: “I’m sorry that I can’t sedate you...but..”

Khan gave a small smile: “Yeah...we haven’t thought of elephant-sedation!”

“Well maybe you should think of more than medical kits. You could come to need medical attention, have a med-bay.....Just a small one in each cave. Just in case!”

____________________

When McCoy had finished, he could already see the healing process in Khan.....areas where the skin had been “sanded” away were now covered in a layer of new, thin, red skin.

“Would you prefer to have a sheet covering you?” McCoy asked Khan.

Khan turned his head: “No, it is not necessary, I suppose you have seen a naked man before, and I’ll heal faster without anything touching the skin. The alternative would be standing up....but I’ll prefer lying down. And I suppose that the scientist in you would like to watch the healing process. That is...if you didn’t use the opportunity when you had me sedated so many years ago?”

Now it was McCoy’s eyes which flared with anger: “That. Was. Very. Inappropriate. And. Totally. Uncalled. For! Do you really think that I would sink that low?!?”

Khan looked at him: “No....this time it was my time to be an idiot! I’m sorry!”

McCoy’s anger disappeared again: “Well...I suppose we are even now!”

“No!” Khan shook his head: “If you hadn’t worked so hard. If you all hadn’t decided to investigate. If you hadn’t found the truth, we would still be frozen ...or dead...or even worse! We can never pay you back for your decision to trust us, to give us a place in freedom on this planet. I’m sorry for my remark before...and you have just saved me hours of healing in pain. I’m sorry again for having offended you!”

“Well...you just saved my life by preventing the sandstorm from reaching in here. That is what friends do, right? Helping each other!”

Now Khan frowned a bit: “Do you consider me being your friend, McCoy?”

“Aren’t we all? Those you have invited for supper later this evening? You have even prepared surprises for us all!”

Khan turned so he was partly lying on his side, and he winced a bit as he was still sore: “I would be very honoured if you would consider me as a friend, Leonard McCoy. But I didn’t intend to invite you all to bribe you into a friendship, but just to show my gratitude!”

McCoy rose and went to the table where he took Khan’s hand: “I would very much like to be your friend, Khan. I have so much admiration for you. That you in spite of your childhood in that facility and the later treatment from humans and even later how Marcus and his men treated you....well that you still found the strength to trust us....and even more saved a lot of lives, even if we had betrayed you. That leaves only room for admiration!”

Khan squeezed McCoy’s hand: “Friends then! And would you, my friend, be so nice to bring me some of the protein bars and replicate some new clothes?That is... unless you want to see me naked” He smiled.

McCoy fetched the protein bars and made some new clothes for Khan. Not as nice as those he had worn before, but just plain black ones, almost identical to those Khan had worn back then as they saw him in the brig on the Enterprise after he had been on Qo’noS.

McCoy couldn’t help but ask: “What happened to your base on Qo’noS, and the weapons, and your clothes? You were wearing Star Fleet regulation clothes in the brig.....and falling with the Vengeance and later you were actually frozen down wearing that too, even if they were fresh ones.”

Khan frowned: “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The Klingons would not be able to learn anything from the remains in my hide-out.....and I do recall something stored in one of the storage-rooms on the Enterprise....something picked up from my place on Qo’noS. Why do you want to know?”

“Just thought that the Klingons might be able to get their hands on something, they could learn just a little bit too much from!”

Khan smiled as he reached for the protein bars and the clothes: “Well. I wasn’t that stupid to leave anything just vaguely useful to them. There were hidden micro-bombs and self-destruct-devices in my hide-out. I’m afraid that some of it might even have been activated in that storage room. Not the bombs. They were just in the cave...but the self-destruct-mechanisms. If someone wanted to look at my items, they would only have found debris and un-useful props.”

“Fine” said McCoy: “I just came to think of it when I made clothes for you. Would you like to have more to eat by now? I could make us something....and I really hope we will be back before the others get worried about us”  
____________________

They were both reading in some ancient paper-books, sitting on one of the couches 1 hour later as Khan lifted his head: “The storm is fading....I think we’ll be able to fly again in about half an hour.”


	23. A demotion and books

On their way home Khan was busy handling the ‘thopter since there was still a lot of turbulence left from the storm, and he left McCoy to his own thoughts. And they were quite a few.

First McCoy realised that he wasn’t unaffected by the way Khan had reacted. It was the first time McCoy had been in danger while being together with Khan, and Khan had just protected him as if it was nothing. He hadn’t even expected gratitude from McCoy. And second: Khan had been surprised that McCoy was willing to help him, and right there, despite everything McCoy had learned about Khan and his past and even the events almost 4 years ago, right there McCoy truly understood the depth of Khan’s commitment, understood his strength and willingness to put other’s needs in front of his own. And third, he was not into men, goddamnit, not like Jim who would shag everything breathing and standing on two legs, but there was something about Khan. Not that Khan was bulging with muscles. He would even probably look rather sinew compared to Jim and Spock and maybe even to McCoy.....at least a McCoy in his far younger days, but there was something feline: elegant, strong with a hidden extreme strength about Khan’s body and movements. Like a tight spring. And despite McCoy’s effort to explain away his fascination, he would so much more have liked to hear Khan moan for other reasons: pleasure or even ecstasy during a sexual act. McCoy had to admit to himself that even despite his heterosexuality.....and what had it brought him? A cheating, greedy wife! Despite that he would be very interested in a re-discovery of what two men could do to each other for pleasure. The one encounter McCoy had had at the university had been....educational....and he wouldn’t mind doing it again. This time with Khan.

Without McCoy noticing, because he had been so deep in his thoughts, they had almost reached Khan’s house again. Khan smiled at him: “A penny for your thoughts” he said and that made McCoy laugh: “Oh Khan, sometimes I forget that you are 300 years old, but this is one of the occasions where I’m reminded. That sentence could my grandmother have said!”

“Well you better buy me an apron with flowers then” Khan smirked....not at all offended this time. He now understood McCoy’s sense of humour better.

  
_________________________

Being safe in the house again, Khan told McCoy to make himself comfortable. Maybe another beer?.....a book?....a shower?....while Khan would find some new clothes and he himself take a shower. He looked at McCoy for a few seconds and then asked him: “You seemed so fascinated by my healing process. Try to let your hand glide over my back.”

McCoy did and looked at his hand. It was faintly glistening in the light: “Sand?” he asked.

“Yeah It is pushed out of my body by now” and Khan showed the inside of the black shirt McCoy had replicated for him and said:“Look...it is trapped in the fabric too”

“Does it hurt?”

“No...it is more a sort of tingling. Am I bleeding?” And Khan turned his back to McCoy.

“Only a few places..” and McCoy had to fight an impulse to stroke Khan’s back again. It wasn’t fair that he was that.....delicious....

“Well, I am a bit delayed in my preparations....so is it OK if I leave you a bit on your own?”

“It’s fine....Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Yeah....maybe fetch a glass for each guest. And the bottle next to the door in the cooling room. I’ll be ready in a few minutes”

  
_________________________

There was still time to sit and talk and drink some grape-juice before the guests would arrive. Everything was ready and prepared for. And Khan was his immaculate self again....dressed in silk once more and looking very regal. When he was dressed like that McCoy could easily see “the ruler of one third of the world”.

“Would you ever consider being a part of the government on New Vulcan?” he heard himself ask.

Khan looked at him and then he put his glass down and thought for a moment looking out in the room towards the table laid ready for the guests: “I would not say “never”, because I would not be able to sit idle and watch if things went wrong. That was partly the reason why I ruled China. Because the Chinese augments weren’t able to do a good job doing that. But it is not an urge......an unfulfilled ambition. I’m rather content right now....not having the burden of governing.”

He smiled and turned his head at McCoy: “I’m not even the leader of our people any more. They have demoted me!”

He took another sip of his glass: “They turned up about a week after they had all been thawed......Joachim, Deeg, Rodriquez and Joaquin and told me that they were grown-ups.....and they didn’t need a father any more. They were safe and able to be on their own and actually they found that I had been “on duty” protecting them since I was 5 years old. It was about time that I got a vacation!”

He smiled again: “At first I was a bit angry, but then I realised that they were right. And I just had to find something else to take care of, worry about.....and then Joaquin and I went on that expedition to find the water!”

McCoy smiled too: “Well. That is the burden of parenthood: to let your children loose. To realise that are fully capable of coping on their own. And my God....it is so difficult! Even if I have been more away from Joanna than I would have liked.....and almost lost her on “Cerberus” in the famine-catastrophe.”

“Oh, I remember that. A bit like “Tarsus IV”.....but handled a lot better by the governor as I remember it.”

“Yeah, and a millionaire, who used his entire fortune to buy food from the Orion slave-traders at horrendous costs to save them all until they got help from the Federation. Of course the man was paid partly back....but he lost more than 90% of his fortune.”

“Impressive.”

They sat in silence a bit more and then McCoy spoke again: “It is actually remarkably how much New Vulcan reminds me of Arrakis...”Dune”...especially since you have made those “Sietch”’es. It is a brilliant idea, not only because of the sandstorms, but more because they can be shelters for the people on the planet. You can never stop thinking as a soldier....a warrior. Can you?”

“No, I always anticipate the worst. Just as you do. I remember someone told me that you used to say: “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”....so don’t tell me that I’m the only one, who is like the man who is waiting for the other shoe to drop, and yes it is yet another old grandma-saying, I know. I can understand Marcus’ concern.....even if I totally disagree with his means to obtain the results. The Klingons present a very real danger and problem, and I’m not going to sit idle and wait for them to attack without having made meticulous preparations. When they come here, I intend to win! But...please McCoy. Couldn’t we change the subject......this is a celebration...and I do not want to spoil the mood by thoughts of an upcoming war!”

“Oh, yes...of course. Well back to Arrakis then. You mentioned that Frank Herbert’s description of a still-suit was rather inaccurate?”

“Yeah....his description would have made a suit that would have killed the person in it within 2 hours exposed to the sun’s heat, but we are working on another model.....When Herbert wrote that book, he had only the materials from his time to build is imaginary suit. We have so many more advanced materials by now. It should be possible by now.”

Khan sat for a while thinking and then he said: “It is a shame there was only that one book....I would have liked to know what happened later. What would happen to the planet and to Paul Maud’dib...”

“Oh”, said McCoy: “..the writer wrote 5 more books: Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapter-house: Dune......I think you can find them on Padds. Or I can have them sent to you. They are classics!”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

McCoy explained:“Well, Paul becomes the Emperor. He controls the Melange and the Space Guild can’t fly without it. It is their “warp”....the changed pilots “fold” the universe and makes it possible to travel long distances. The Guild later try to make melange other ways. By making sand-worms live on other planets and alter them to live in the sea. Paul’s visions aren’t clear, as you know, and he becomes the victim of an assassination and disappears out into the desert. He becomes a prophet....because he didn’t dare to take the last step and become immortal. His son, Leto II, does it....makes an armour of the “sand-trouts”, the “Little Makers”. It is an armour he later can’t remove any more, as it becomes a part of his body. He becomes the emperor of the universe and just as you mentioned in your book....an almighty emperor can be the best leader ever....securing peace for a very long time. But he can’t afford to die! And Leto II ruled for more than 3500 years...even longer. His consciousness kept on living in the sand-worms, which now were able to settle on other planets....”

Khan said: “Oh, I see. I never got the chance to find or read the rest. Yes I would like very much to have them send!”

___________________________

Half an hour later all the guests had arrived: Sarek, Spock Prime and the officers from the SS Enterprise: Pavel Chekov, Nyota Uhura, Scotty, Hikaru Sulu, Spock and of course Jim. The inner circle of what Khan himself had called “Free the Augments”......and had to explain about that old film from the 20th century about the killer whale “Willy” that a lot of people wanted to rescue from a dolphin-park......the “Free-Willy” film. And Scotty had said: “Hmmm....Khan as a killer-whale? OK....it fits!” and they had all laughed.

They were standing holding a glass as Khan began to talk: “Almost a year has passed since I gained my freedom. I was given a place to live......and my people back. I can never truly express my gratitude. But I can invite you to dinner in my house. The Inner Circle of 'Free the Augments'. So, a toast to you all....not in wine, because it hasn’t matured yet....but in grape-juice from our own grapes from our own fields. Do I dare to call you my friends?”

“You can.”

“We truly are.”

Were the answers.

“Well then......In that case: Welcome, my friends, to New Vulcan!”


	24. Dinner and gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took such a long time to finish the story. I've still got some unused ideas...so maybe there would be a second part. Now with Khan as a crew-member. And maybe McCoy and Khan would figure something out about each other. And what about the Klingons?

Khan pointed at the table and said: “Dear friends. Please be seated. There is a gift at each setting, with your names on it. So please find your place and sit down. Don’t open the gifts yet though, as I have something to say to each one of you.”

They sat down and Khan explained about the food: “The first dish is in the bowl in front of you. If you press the red button it’ll start to heat. But please do not open the lid yet.”

  
They started to talk...eager to know what was in the bowls, as Khan explained further, “Back on Earth...already in the 20th century they had something similar. So...I can’t claim to have invented that. I just improved it. This will be the first dish. Then I’ll like to give you your gifts...and after that a buffet will be ready. With specialities from Earth and here from New Vulcan and finally there will be served tea or coffee and something sweet. So...please be ready for the first dish and remove the lids.”

There were different expressions around the table: three looking happily surprised...as much as Vulcans would express that feeling on their faces. The rest, besides Bones, looked horrified...”Plomek-soup!”

But of course it turned out to be perfect. The Vulcans didn’t find the taste that altered and the humans found it quite delicious and Khan explained about ‘clashing tastes’ and ‘symmetry’ and ‘mirror-molecules’ and all the humans thanked him for saving them from future attacks of their taste-buds as this version of the infamous Plomek-soup would now be the official one.  
_________________

Time for the presents: Khan rose and spoke, “As I mentioned before I’ll never be able to truly express my thankfulness towards you all. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been dead and my people too, or even worse: we would have been alive in bio-labs as lab-rats. So...these my gifts is only a small token of my gratitude. It is nothing really...just something I’ve found to be suitable for each one of you!”

He made a gesture towards Uhura and smiled as he said, “Ladies first!”

Uhura smiled and opened her rather small box. It contained 3 sets of earrings...studs... and as she looked closer at them, she saw that tiny Starfleet-symbols had been engraved.  
She looked at Khan, “They are beautiful!”

He smiled back, “I’m glad you appreciate them. Without telling too much I can say that all the other gifts are not new. They are from the cannibalized space ships or something I’ve traded with foreign races. But your earrings...I noticed that you had holes in your ear lobes, and I wanted to give you something special. You remind me of my wife....even if you are of African origin and she was of Indian. But you are such a fighter too. You’ll have to be....being a woman and of darker skin tone. Even if the Star Fleet Federation claims to support equality, there are not enough female officers or enough non-Caucasians to represent the whole population on Earth according to their percentage of the population and I know that you have fought hard to be in your position....so....a special gift for a special lady. The metal of the earrings are here from New Vulcan: gold, silver and platinum...and you have spotted the engraving of the Star Fleet symbol.”

“The jeweller is very talented”, said Uhura, “Is he from New Vulcan?”

“Not quite....” smiled Khan, “At least not born here and has only been here a year...It is me!”

Jim groaned and said mockingly, “Yet another thing Khan is good at...but why not? A ‘jeweller’ as well.....very useful in a war!”

Khan smiled back, “Well, it is just metal....and we were taught to work with metals back then too. Of course it is a useful skill for a warrior.”

Now Spock Prime came to his aid, “I can only support Khan in his words. If he had not had the knowledge about metals, he would not have found the rich resources in the cliffs of this planet...and we would have had less to trade with. As it is now, we are one of the richest planets in the Federation.”

“And my ancestors culture would have been poorer or non-existent without their swords and their knowledge how to make them” mentioned Sulu.

“OK, OK...I admit it is a useful skill for a warrior” said Jim and lifted his hands in surrender.

Now Scotty found it necessary to interfere too, “And for people on a space ship. Without extensive knowledge of how metals and alloys interact I can tell ya, Jim, that your Gray Lady would fall apart.”

“OK...I give up. I realise that knowledge of metals is the most important knowledge on a space ship!” said Jim.

And Spock said, “It is common knowledge and an old saying that if you want to travel in space, one of your ancestors would have had to be a blacksmith” and that uttered with an eyebrow lifted.

Jim listened to the words and then he smiled, “Yeah...it is the truth!”

Spock couldn’t help but add, “But it is not entirely correct since....”

Jim interrupted him, “Yeah...I know there are exceptions...but 99,99% of all space-travelling races use metals...so the old saying fits.”

Khan had just listened to the friendly banter between the officers of Jim’s ship and couldn’t help thinking how different it was compared to the tone amongst Marcus’ people and those from his dream.

 

Khan waited until people were silent again and pointed at Pavel Chekov, “Now it is your turn..ladies first...and then the youngest. Before you open, Chekov: You and I had a shitty childhood. I, back in those facilities and you on that foster home in Russia. But that didn’t mean that there were not moments of joy....time to play. I overheard something you mentioned to Scotty, so please open your present.“

Pavel opened, “Oh my..it iz a Game Boy!” and he smiled and took it out of the box, “And a lot of gamez too..” His whole face did shine like a sun, “Zank you, Khan!”

“You are welcome. I heard that you told Scotty that is was one of the few pleasures on that foster home. I’ve changed the battery....so you’ll never have to charge it. I know it is an older model than that from your childhood...”

Chekov looked in the box to see which games he had got and he looked up and smiled, “Oh...thiz one is even better...and antique.....” and then he realised that now was not the time to play the games and he put the Game Boy down again, “I’m very grateful, Khan. It is a wonderful gift and I look forward to play it again!”

Khan smiled at the young man’s eager and turned his attention towards Sulu and made a gesture towards his present, “Please, Helmsman Sulu, open your box.”

Inside was a knife, but not any knife. A knife with the pattern on the blade that showed it was made the same way as the ancient swords in Japan...or those from Damascus. Sulu turned and twisted the knife in the light to see the pattern more clearly. Then he looked at Khan, “Thank you...it is wonderful!”

Khan explained, “It is not from Earth. But it is made the same way as Earth’s most skilful sword-smiths made swords...and knifes.” Khan looked around at the others, “I don’t know if you know...but on Earth the ancient weaponry blacksmiths, more than 1600 years ago, were able to mingle the two kinds of iron: the strong, but fragile cast iron together with the plastic but softer wrought iron, thus making incredible sharp and yet flexible blades...and those aliens who made this knife used the same technique.”

“Which emphasises the old saying” uttered Spock.

And they all laughed.

 

Now it was Jim’s turn to open his gift. Inside were 5 antique books. “The Hobbit”, all 3 “Lord of the Rings” and “Silmarillion” Not on plastinette but on real paper. And very beautiful books of high quality, with full leather binding. Jim didn’t say a word, just caressed the books fine leather and then he looked at Khan and just said, “Thank you!”...then he showed the books to the others and said, “I do not know where-from Khan did get those books...but they are classics and people would give their...well...left arm to put their hands on these!”

He turned towards Khan and asked, “How did you know...?”

Khan smiled back, “You had quite a few in your quarters. I saw a glimpse as I passed by...and then I guessed. They are from the eldest space ship we cannibalised to make our shelters. I suppose the captain there had been a collector of ancient books. Tolkien-books.”

Jim smiled, “Back when I was a child....and things got too much..I used to go out in the barn and read some of the old books, I had found in the attic. Uncle Frank would have used them to light a fire. But I managed to hide them from him. It was “The Hobbit” and the 3 “Lord of the Rings”-books....and even if a few pages were missing, I could still disappear into that fantasy-world.”

Jim looked at the books: “But how you, Khan, could know that those books were my refuge and get them for me in such beautiful editions...well that is beyond me!”

Khan smiled back, “I didn’t, but they are classics and I loved them too. I only managed to read them once and only very fast....as I....hm...ruled. But I liked what I read and thought you might like them too.”

“I do...I do.”  
_________________

Khan looked at Spock and said, “You are next in line...if we continue to go by age, but your present is a part of the presents for Spock Prime and your father. So is it acceptable that you’ll have to wait?”

Spock smiled at the man who had turned out to be so different from Spock’s first impression...and who Spock had tried to kill and do so much harm...and yet Khan had forgiven him, “It is your party and your rules. I’ll accept it...of course!”

And they continued to open gifts: For Scotty there were a collection of mini-bottles of whiskey, bourbon and whisky...from various countries on Earth and a promise of a bigger box with more bottles so he and Bones could continue their banter about which one was best: ‘whiskey’, ‘bourbon’ or ‘whisky’. An ongoing banter that both Scotty and Bones found very amusing and the rest of the officers a bit tiresome!

For Bones there were a nice collection of old medical instruments. A doctor of one of the cannibalised spaceships had apparently been a collector...of alien medical instruments too. So the small box in front of Bones had only been a small part of the collection. The rest was waiting for Bones in the next room.

Finally Khan turned towards Sarek, Spock Prime and Spock and asked them to open their gifts at the same time. In Sarek’s there was a book, written in Vulcan...about philosophy. In Spock Prime’s a book about logic...a very well-known Vulcan book. Thought to be lost as Vulcan was destroyed and in Spock’s there was a flute. The three men were told to look at the bottom of their boxes and they all produced a Padd. Khan told them to switch it on as he explained:  
“As we bought old space ships, and as the rumour went around in the two of our Quadrants, that we wanted certain items, we living here on New Vulcan began to collect Vulcan items: plants, books, instruments, clothing.....almost everything. To use an old saying from Earth ‘everything from pins to elephants’...and it has been such a task to keep it a secret from you three!”

And Khan told about the ‘museum’ or rather the ‘stockhouse’ where everything related to Vulcan and Vulcans were obtained and cared for....and even more important: where people could come at get nearly free replicas of every item. Only if the replica required valuable elements like gold or platinum, they would have to pay for it.

“Your presents are of course replicas...and your real gift is that you, if you would wish to do so, can chose whatever you like and have it replicated without any costs...as long as you live. You have given me and my people a place to belong, a planet under our feet. I can never pay you back for that....and these my gifts are only a humble attempt to do so.”, Khan told the three Vulcans.

And now something happened that only a very few people would ever see: the three Vulcans rose....and had tears in their eyes and hugged Khan fiercely. Then they sat down again...and all 4 men did put back their mask of ‘neutrality’. Oh yes...the augments fitted very nicely into the Vulcan society. They too were schooled in the art of not showing any feelings. But just as the case was with the Vulcans, it only masked the fact that emotions ran deep and fiercely....and not that they didn’t have those emotions at all.

Now was the time for the buffet and Khan asked his guests to press the red button on the serving-bowls and then wait a few seconds before they would be able to choose between all the dishes.

There were dishes from all the countries the officers came from: haggish from Scotland, American beef and buttered corn, delicious soups and fish from Japan, borsjtj from Russia, fufu and peanut-soup from Congo...the land of Uhuru’s forefathers, dishes well-known on New Vulcan and several Indian dishes from Khan’s childhood.

When finally everyone had eaten enough and refused to eat another bite, or they would combust, as Scotty had put it, “One more bite...and all my intestines would be decorating yea’ bloody room, Khan. It is your secret plan to kill us all like that!!”, they all sat down in the living room and wanted to hear more about McCoy’s adventure with Khan earlier this day.

And McCoy happily told them about the sandstorm, the shelters and how Khan had saved his life.

Right there Khan interrupted and said that it hadn’t been that dangerous...and that McCoy on the other hand had saved not alone Khan’s house but a lot of crops too...and then he served the famous Vulcan tea.

There were a pause of almost reverent silence as they all realised what they were drinking....and Khan told them that it was thanks to McCoy that they would be able to drink that tea at all in a foreseeable future! Without his discovery of the sandstorm, they would have lost nearly all the tea-bushes.

Now all the officers from the Enterprise caught each other’s eyes and nodded and rose to fetch some parcels too. They gathered around Khan who looked a bit bewildered at the parcels they held in their hands. He began to say, “Why?...” as he was interrupted by Spock, who held his hand up to indicate silence.

“We too have planned gifts for you, Khan Noonien Sing, Khan. During our investigations, during our fight to free you and your people....without knowing anything about that Ceti Eel....we have come to admire you. Your honour and your willingness to put your people’s needs above your own. A true leader and an honourable warrior and an honest man. And that is why we want you to do something. What we want you to do, will be clear when we all have given you our gifts. So please...no questions before that. Is that acceptable?”

Khan looked up with a slight frown...seemed to be thinking, and then he nodded, “Acceptable!”

Spock actually smiled as he gave Khan a Padd and said, “Read, please. Especially article 17b.”

And Khan read out loud, _“From now on there will no longer be any obstacle against genetic altered humans, previously known as “augments”, in the Star Fleet Federation. They are to be considered as full citizens of New Vulcan and the same regulations, as for any other citizen of New Vulcan, would apply for them.”_

He looked up..immediately understanding what it meant for him.

Jim gave him a Padd with a contract on it, “We would like to welcome you on board at the SS Enterprise as a crew-member.”

And then Scotty hurried to give Khan his present. Khan opened it and it was a red star fleet tunic and Scotty said, “Either in ‘Engineering’ or ‘Security’...and I tell ya that ya would be much appreciated there!”

Now Bones rose and handed Khan another present.... a blue tunic, “ Or in ‘Medical’ or ‘Science’ where you would be equally appreciated for your skills!”

And finally Chekov and Sulu handed Khan another present containing the yellow tunic and said simultaneously, “Or in ‘Command’ or ‘Helm’.”

Khan was just sitting there. Looking at the three tunics, “But I’m not a commander. Marcus faked my papers. I never went to the academy...”

Jim smiled, “We know. That is why I challenge you! I made my four years of education in three. You have one year. This year...well my Gray Lady is in dock at the moment and will be ready in about 3 months. Then we have a few assignments in our quadrant. And then...in about 12 months we should be ready for our second attempt to explore the Galaxy...’To boldly go where no man has gone before’. That leaves you about a year to finish...and it should be time enough....wouldn’t you agree?”

“Plenty!” smiled Khan.

“And even if you haven’t finished, when we want you on board in about three months, as the contract says, then you can finish your education on board. Like a few other crew-members...McCoy’s daughter amongst others.”, continued Spock.

“You’ll just have to sign, “ said Uhura and showed her “gift”, a pair of scissors, “....and have a hair-cut. Not even male New Vulcans are allowed to have long hair!”

Khan smiled at her and at the other guests in his living-room, “Cut away.....it is a small price to pay for being a part of the most amazing crew in the Star Fleet!”  
_______________________

McCoy had stayed after the others had left. It was because he wanted to help Khan cleaning up. It wasn't fair just to leave the man totally alone. Especially when he was going to be a crew-member in a foreseeable future.

As they had finished cleaning up, they sat in the living room and talked a bit. Khan had offered that McCoy could sleep in one of his guest rooms. The other guests would sleep at Sarek’s house and at Spock Prime’s house, before they would leave New Vulcan in about 4 days.

“Do you really think, that the Klingons are about to turn their warfare up a notch?” asked McCoy...turning his glass with fine Bourbon and absent-minded admiring the colour of the liquid in the glass.

“I’m afraid so. I’ll grant Marcus that. He was not total insane anticipating a war with the Klingons. I just strongly disagree with the way he wanted to prevent it! Attack is not always the best way of defending yourself...especially when you try to attack without proper trained soldiers or weaponry.”, said Khan.

McCoy looked at him with understanding, “And he could have had you working loyally for him, if he just had secured your people a place to live instead of killing them!”

Khan shook his head, “He was not a man, who would even have considered that as a possibility. He only knew one ‘language’ and that was that of ‘power and abuse’. Just like those scientists back in time. Those who made us out of fear and thirst for ultimate power. We were just tools. And I was nothing but for Marcus as well. He never saw me as a fellow human being. Just something to be used as he saw fit. And you are right.....I would have obeyed him in every way: he could have used me as a lab- rat, tortured me, killed me...as long as I could be sure that my people were safe.....and McCoy....even if I’m not a captain, but just an ensign, cadet or a simple crew-member....you must know that I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that you’ll be safe when I’m becoming a crew-member.”

“We know. But that is not why we want you on board....and we have no intention of exploiting you. Just like everyone else tries to keep everybody safe by doing their job, we’ll try to keep you safe as well.” was the answer.

Khan smiled, “Well, space is a dangerous place...even if it is only a fraction more dangerous than planet-surfaces.....but you’ll know all about that, saying, ‘Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.’ So it still puzzles me why you joined the Star Fleet. I know that it didn’t work out with your wife, but....”

McCoy took a large gulp of his bourbon and said, “Well my wife turned out to be somewhat different from the woman I married, when I failed to give her her dream life...as a doctor’s wife. She thought that I became a doctor to earn money and when she discovered that it wasn’t my main goal, she took what I had. She and her family and had too good lawyers...and I saw no other way out and away than to join the academy.“

McCoy smiled again and looked at Khan, “I had hidden in the loo at the space-shuttle on our way to the SS Enterprise. I was found and placed beside Jim...and promised to vomit all over him...And that was the beginning of our friendship.”

“Well...being threatened to be blown to pieces and then being beaten up after having saved your arses, that is a strange beginning to a friendship too!”

McCoy looked sad and said, “It still torments us all involved....if it can be of some consolation to you. The way we treated you...that we betrayed you the way we did. Spock Prime feels extremely guilty as he finds that he is mainly to blame for our view on you back then. That he transferred his Khan’s personality upon you claiming that you were manic and homicidal when you in reality were poisoned and desperate.”

Khan touched McCoy’s hand, “But you have made up for it ever since. We, I.....have gained so much more than we ever could have dreamt of: a planet to live on....not fertile and luxuriant like Earth...but manageable. And as it turned out so much richer than anticipated. We got fellow inhabitants and we are not alone tolerated but very appreciated in this society. The Vulcans giving us their own family names. It is worth every suffering from my side...every! And so much more than I hoped for as we fled from earth so many years ago. I’m truly thankful!”

“I’m glad everything turned out the way it did too”, said McCoy and emptied his glass.


End file.
